


Everything was fine until whatever

by Fatale (femme)



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: AU human, Bones AU, Enemies to Lovers, Humor, M/M, i guess, vague science/cop stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-08-19 18:47:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16540127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/femme/pseuds/Fatale
Summary: “Why am I out here?” Alec complained loudly. A few techs looked up, then hastily dropped their heads as Alec swiveled around to glare at them.“That was me,” Magnus chirped happily. He was holding a small notepad and wearing aviator sunglasses. He would look every inch the g-man except for the earcuff he wore when outside the office. Also, his suit was purple. There was also that.Magnus said, “I thought you might want to analyze--”“The concrete?”“Yes,” Magnus said quickly. “Lots of, uh, particulars.”“I don’t have to analyze it: it’s concrete.”“My mistake,” Magnus said, beaming at him. “Still, you look very fetching in your biohazard suit.”Alec’s lovely eyes, visible only through a small window in the suit, looked positively outraged.---magnus is an fbi agent. alec is a scientist. a bones au.





	1. it could have been worse, probably

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ravelen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ravelen/gifts).



> ugh, wrote this all in present tense and then switched to past. forgive me for anything i might have missed. i'm sure there's a ton. i took this title from something? a book i've never read?
> 
> for ravelen, in honor of her old fandom and who wanted a crossover.
> 
> if you want to talk to me, i'm on twitter now! finally! @fatalewrites

 

 

 

 

“So, tell me about a typical case you might work together,” Simon says. This new FBI spook -- so named for their uncanny ability to make people confess to doing dumb shit on company time -- looks fresher than the box of Chinese takeout currently moldering the back of Magnus' refrigerator. He uses that appliance for one thing and one thing only: to chill his vodka.

Which is to say, Magnus lives in a sad, lonely bachelor pad in the city, the best he can afford on his FBI salary if he also chooses to eat, which he is decidedly fond of. 

While he’s being evaluated, Magnus is stuck riding a desk instead of riding other far more entertaining things. He keeps his gun locked in his wall safe at home since there’s no particular need for it in the office unless the vending machines make him particularly angry. He feels off-kilter without its comforting weight; naked, and not in a fun way at all.

“I’m not sure what you want from me,” Magnus says, tapping his foot impatiently. His socks peek out from between his shoes and slacks, black with a faint gold sheen. 

Simon sits up a little straighter, flipping through his notes. It’s a distraction technique while he’s gathering his thoughts. Magnus knows it well; hell, he invented it. 

"I’m here to evaluate your rather unorthodox partnership to decide if it should continue.”

“Yeah,” Magnus says, rubbing his forehead. It’s the first thing in the morning and he’s already exhausted. “Okay, so, I guess I should start with the squints--”

“Squints?” Simon asks, brows knitted. 

Magnus gestures vaguely with his hand. “You know, they stand around and squint at stuff.”

“Ah, the scientists from the Institute you’ve been working with.”

“Yeah, like I said, _squints_ ,” Magnus says. “So, I guess a typical case would go like this--”

 

 ---

 

“Why am I out here?” Alec complained loudly. A few techs looked up, then hastily dropped their heads as Alec swiveled around to glare at them. 

Izzy looked up from where she was crouched down, examining bones scattered on a black tarp stretched out over the pavement. It was going to rain soon, Magnus could taste the moisture in the air, but Izzy wouldn’t be out here by the time it did. She always did her precursory examination in the field and a far more thorough one back at the Institute. “I didn’t call you,” she told Alec. “The techs could have gathered any particulates and you could have analyzed them back at your lab.”

“That was me,” Magnus chirped happily. He was holding a small notepad and wearing aviator sunglasses. He would look every inch the g-man except for the earcuff he wore when outside the office. Also, his suit was purple. There was also that.

As it turned out, the FBI didn’t deem it necessary to rule out primary colors for its agents, perhaps foolishly assured in the good taste of said agents. It was not a mistake they’d be likely to repeat.

Magnus said, “I thought you might want to analyze--”

“The concrete?” 

“Yes,” Magnus said quickly. “Lots of, uh, particulars.”

"I don’t have to analyze it: it’s concrete.”

“My mistake,” Magnus said, beaming at him. “Still, you look very fetching in your biohazard suit.”

Alec’s lovely eyes, visible only through a small window in the suit, looked positively outraged. 

 

\---

 

Simon crosses his legs. “Hold on, let’s go back some. Can you tell me how the two of you met?”

“It’s kind of a long story,” Magnus hedges. 

Simon checks his watch. It’s a cheap Timex. He‘s a baby spook and Magnus has to hide his grin. “I’ve got all day.”

Fuck it, Magnus thinks. If this baby-faced tater tot is going to write up a report to determine his fitness for duty, his right to his own goddamn partner, then he might as well get the whole story from the very beginning. 

Magnus sighs and starts talking.

 

 

\---

 

Magnus, attending a lecture at CUNY, had decided to look into Isabelle Lightwood, a leggy young prodigy in the field of Forensic Anthropology. It was said that she once solved a thousand-year-old murder mystery from a pinky finger and a fossilized tooth. 

If she could solve those kinds of cases, he was curious about what she could do with fresh evidence.

He slid into a chair at the back of the lecture hall and half-listened, half admired her striking dark hair and fitted red dress. He caught about 25% of what she was saying, but it all seemed correct. He waited for her to finish and for the students to nearly empty out before he made his way to the front of the hall, where she was packing up her laptop and notes. 

“Miss Lightwood?”

“Yes,” she said, turning around, gaze sweeping up and down Magnus. She seemed to like what she saw. “And you would be?”

“Magnus Bane, FBI,” he said, slipping his badge out of his pocket and holding it up.

“Ah,” she said, interest immediately dimming and turning back to her notes.

 Was she not a fan of the FBI? Didn’t matter. He still needed her help with a case that had been puzzling him for the better part of six months. Besides, he couldn’t afford to get involved with anyone else involved in a case, no matter how tangential. Last time was enough to teach him a lesson. 

“I could use your help,” Magnus said, tucking his badge away.

“Many people could,” Isabelle said, shutting her briefcase with a final-sounding snap. “I know your type, you come in and boss us around, dangling paltry government grants that you’ll just take away the next year to buff our already absurd military budget.” She stepped off the lecture stage, heels clicking against the linoleum. “Make an appointment through the Institute, Brooks Brothers.” 

“Have you ever helped catch a serial killer?” Magnus called out to her departing back. 

She stopped abruptly, and Magnus knew he had her. She turned to peer at Magnus curiously. “And you want me to--”

“Work with me. Analyze evidence. He’s killed three young women and the only I know for certain is that he’ll kill again.”

Magnus looked around at the bare cinderblock walls, the linoleum floor. It was ugly, basic, and Isabelle Lightwood was anything but. He decided to go with his gut feeling. "I think you're a woman who craves adventure, who wants more out of life than lecturing bored teens."

"Not necessarily," Izzy said demurely. 

"Of course you do. It's human nature; we're never satisfied. We always want more, crave more." He could tell by the way her eyes were shining, the way she'd gone completely still that he'd gotten her. "Isabelle -- if I may call you that -- there are a few moments where we make decisions that can change our lives. This is one of those moments for you. What do you say, you want to _study_ adventure or go out and _live_ it?" 

“We would be partners?” she asked slowly, dark eyes cautious.

“You would be a professional consultant."

“But also like partners.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Magnus said. “Will you do it?”

“I’m in,” Izzy said with a slow grin. She smiled with her whole face, and Magnus found it impossible not to be charmed. Before he knew it, he was smiling back. He'd had a feeling this would be a great idea and was gratified to be proven right, yet again.

They exchanged email addresses to hammer out the finer details later and so he could start working on getting her security clearance worked out, when Magnus looked up from his phone. "Isabelle?"

"Yes?"

"I would never wear such a tacky suit."

"I know," she said.

 

\---

 

They worked together well. Izzy was cautious where Magnus was impulsive, unless they both agreed to be foolhardy, but it usually worked in their favor. 

The initial spark of interest, if there ever was any, fizzled and turned into something calm and productive, mutual appreciation giving way to respect and genuine partnership. Magnus thought that meant he was growing as a person and a professional, until about a month in when he stopped by the Institute to drop some files off and met her brother.

Alec Lightwood was over six feet of irate nerd. He buttoned his shirts to the very top, spent all his time cloistered in his lab, talking with bugs and analyzing soil samples, and absolutely loathed Magnus on sight.

Magnus was instantly besotted. 

Six months later, and if anything, Alec had grown frosty enough to freeze Magnus’ balls off. But luckily for everyone involved, Magnus’ balls were big brass ones impervious to squint-hatred.

“How about we go out to dinner sometime, Alexander?” Magnus said, practically throwing himself through the doorway of Alec’s lab. He‘d learned the hard way that if he waited for an invitation, he’d be waiting forever. 

On his way to the Institute, he’d picked up one of those nasty juice infusions Alec seemed fond of, some vile combination of kale and wheatgrass. He’d gotten the idea after seeing Alec listlessly eating a salad that he informed Magnus had arugula and watercress, good for the digestive tract. It looked a bit like the pile of dirty leaves that accumulated outside of the FBI in autumn, but hey, whatever kept Alec regular. 

“That has about as much probability as two atoms spontaneously switching places,” Alec said, not looking up from behind his thick protective goggles. They made him look like he had enormous googly eyes; they were the cutest googly eyes Magnus had ever seen.

“Good?” Magnus hazarded, setting the cup down next to Alec.

“The probability is 1 over a googol.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Magnus said calmly. “So, how about that dinner?”

 

\---

 

“It’s a bit unorthodox,” Simon says, making notes in his bureau-issued legal pad. Like everything in his office, it passes first muster: it's standard-issue, worn around the edges, a perfectly respectable black. But the ends of a few band stickers peek out from around the edges. Simon's suit looks fine, but the converse he wears with it are anything but standard. Magnus begins to feel a little better about his predicament.

“Yeah, but we’re good partners,” Magnus says defensively. 

“Hey,” Simon says, lifting a placating hand, “I’m on your side.”

“Great, I'm super glad I can count on you in-between diaper changes," Magnus mutters.

“Wicked unfair,” Simon says, “and some people enjoy that kind of thing."

"Ugh, don't remind me. I think I dated one of those people by accident. It was a lonely, bleak year."

 

\---

 

After watching Alec stomp towards the evidence van, Magnus turned to Izzy. “Was it something I said?”

Izzy sighed and picked up a bone to examine it. Magnus was pretty sure at one time, it was a finger. Or possibly a toe. As it turned out, once stripped of flesh and everything else that made them human, people all kind of looked the same, like a big mess of indecipherable calcium scraps. There was probably a deep metaphor to be had there, but -- yuck.

“You have to stop needling him so much. It’s sad. You’re like a boy pulling the pigtails of a girl you secretly like on the playground.”

“I don’t know if that’s more insulting to me or your brother,” Magnus said. Also, it was _hardly_ secret. 

“Appropriate metaphor is appropriate.”

“I shouldn’t have called him to report to the scene of a crime where he wasn’t needed. It might have been a little heavy-handed,” Magnus admitted. 

“You think?” Izzy said, sitting back on her haunches to give him her full attention. How she did that in six-inch heels, Magnus would never know, but it was impressive nonetheless. “Remember, slow and steady wins the race.”

“If we moved any slower, we might make our second anniversary by the time we’re seventy,” Magnus muttered. His notepad was dangling from his fingertips and he’d clearly given up any pretense of working. 

Izzy gave him a speculative look. “You’re really that serious about Alec?”

“Erk,” Magnus said, unsure of what his expression gave away. Whatever Izzy saw, it stopped her in her tracks. “Well, I’d have to cancel all my other dates,” Magnus lied easily. Aside from one disastrous pseudo-relationship, he’d been shamefully date-free since meeting Alec. A city that once held a thousand tasty options for a Saturday night all seemed hollow now. No one was tall enough, smart enough, or deeply annoyed by Magnus enough.

Izzy snorted and to Magnus’ great relief, went back to examining the bones. 

“He did look adorable in the hazmat suit,” Magnus said, adjusting his glasses. They were tinted too dark to be practical and he had trouble seeing out of them, but they looked pretty sweet.

Izzy stared at Magnus like he was crazy and she felt a little sorry for him.

 


	2. inevitable backslide into homoerotic subtext

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You always get this weird, sweaty look on your face when you’re thinking about him,” Izzy said.

 

Magnus wrote up his report and went back to his apartment. He scanned the refrigerator and sniffed a few half-eaten boxes of takeout. He knew how to cook, could even do it well on occasion, but cooking for one seemed like a lonely, depressing prospect.

He settled on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich standing over the kitchen sink, thumbing through his mail, and hating his life a little. His last steady relationship had been nearly four months ago, a fireman named Shane; lovely dark eyes and a calm, easygoing manner. It was only when he dropped by the Institute to bring Magnus dinner one evening and Magnus saw him pass by Alec that Magnus was horrified to realize they could have been brothers.

Magnus broke up with him the next morning over coffee in the park, explaining it wasn’t him, it all Magnus. He was hopelessly in lust with someone that would possibly never love him as much as he loved Titan Arum, a flower that smelled like a corpse, an unpleasant factoid Magnus had only become aware of in the last few months because of the increasingly odd company he'd found himself keeping.

“Tall, good-looking guy at the lab?” Shane asked.

Magnus rubbed the back of his neck. “How did you know?”

“He was eye-catching,” Shane said, and added a little dryly, “And I noticed the passing resemblance.”

“Yeah,” Magnus said and finished his coffee. There really wasn’t anything left to say. It was surprisingly amicable for a breakup, in Magnus' experience. His usually involved tears and yelling and at least one piece of broken furniture; he tended to date drama queens.

Now, standing alone in the middle of his apartment, he polished off his sandwich and broke out his vodka. Other than a bone-deep weariness, he wasn't particularly sleepy. It seemed like a waste to go out: wherever he looked, no one would ever be quite right. And though it passed the time, casual hookups left him feeling cold in the morning.

Magnus sighed, poured himself another drink, and settled in on his couch to go over some case notes.

 

\---

 

In the middle of the night, Magnus got the call there was a body at the Four Seasons. He pulled on his clothes in a hurry, not bothering to turn on the overhead light, mind already racing. His curtains were open, moon large and bright in the sky. Before leaving, Magnus thought for a minute and called dispatch back. Next, he called Izzy, already on the road. After running an errand, he flipped on his sirens and pulled a sharp u-turn to get to her apartment.

She answered, fully dressed and pulled open the door before he could even lift a hand to knock.

Behind her, stood Alec in a hoodie and jeans, hair mussed. It was the first time Magnus had seen him out of his starched shirts and dress slacks. The jacket was only three-quarters of the way zipped and Magnus could see the graceful swoop of Alec's collarbones, the thatch of dark hair high on his chest.

Magnus felt a little faint.

“Hey,” Izzy said, snapping her fingers in front of Magnus' face. “You okay there?”

“Yeah,” Magnus answered, legs a bit unsteady. His knuckles were white where he had them wrapped around the door jamb, holding himself up.

“Because you look a little crazy.”

“Ready to go?” Magnus asked, pointedly ignoring Izzy's last statement.

“I’m coming with,” Alec announced.

“We’d just call him out an hour later to come grab some samples,” Izzy pointed out. Reluctant at first, Alec had decided he no longer liked the quality of work the techs produced and needed to visit all the crime scenes himself. Not that Magnus was complaining. On the days he didn’t see Alec in the field, he could almost always come up with a reason to stop by the Institute -- drop a file off, get updates about the case, the funny little organic cheese puffs they carried in the vending machines.

Magnus agreed that it made sense for Alec to come along, but it wasn’t until Alec was in the backseat, buckling himself in, that it occurred to Magnus to ask why he was even at Izzy’s apartment in the first place.

“Ah,” Alec said, cheeks flushing. “Jace had some company. They were getting kind of loud.”

“You live with Jace?” Magnus asked, flabbergasted.

Izzy snorted in the passenger seat, forensic bag tucked in the footwell. For once, she was wearing sneakers. Who knew dead bodies in the middle of the night was the way to get her to wear sensible footwear.

“Have you ever seen that show, Big Bang Theory?”

“No,” Magnus answered.

“Neither have I, but I heard they‘re kind of losers, so probably a lot like that. Alec and Jace still live in the same dumpy one-bedroom apartment they had since college and take turns sleeping on the couch.”

“What do you do when one of you -- ah, brings a companion home?”

“Exactly what they’re doing now, Alec comes over to my place to crash in my spare bedroom.”

“He’s a good roommate,” Alec said defensively. “And sometimes, you know, Jace goes to your place.”

“Sometimes,” Izzy agreed. “Not often.”

“Do tell,” Magnus prompted, intrigued. Though it was a tragedy for the New York dating scene that Alec wasn’t getting laid all that often, Magnus couldn’t say he was very sorry that Alec wasn’t regularly taking other people to his bed. He didn’t want Alec to be lonely, exactly, he would just prefer Alec to be desperately hungry for his cock. That didn’t seem like too much to ask.

Magnus abruptly changed lanes, honking horns and a stream of curse words following in his wake. He loved New York, Magnus thought happily, rolling down his window and waving his middle finger in the general direction of the yelling.

“You’re a terrible driver,” Izzy said, remarkably unbothered, digging in her bag and pulling out a stick of gum.

“You’re worse,” Magnus told her.

“Can we agree that you’re both equally bad?” Alec asked loudly. “Why didn’t I drive?”

“You've nothing to brag about,” Izzy countered. “Anyway, they live like frat boys: takeout and frozen meals, leftover pizza for breakfast.”

“I expected you to only eat disgustingly sensible meals,” Magnus said, twisting around in his seat to pin Alec with an accusing glare. Everything he was learning about Alec was the exact opposite of what he’d always assumed, and that said incredibly bad things about his love life and general investigative skills.

“Would you please watch the road,” Alec begged.

“Why didn’t you say anything all those times I’ve brought you quinoa juice and crap?”

“I don’t think that’s a thing,” Izzy interjected, chewing loudly.

“I mostly eat salads at work because that’s what my mother expects from me,” Alec said. “I just don’t feel like washing it down with a wheatgrass smoothie.”

They arrived at the hotel and pulled up to the front doors. Magnus flagged down the parking attendant and flashed his badge. Izzy got out the car, shouldering her forensic kit. Alec made a move to follow her, but Magnus held the door closed.

“Stay here,” he told Alec, tapping on the window to get Alec to roll it down.

“What?” Alec said, looking furious and deeply attractive.

“We don’t know what we’re walking into. I’ll call down to you once we have a handle on the situation. It’s for your safety: we’re both armed and you aren’t.”

Izzy grinned cheekily at Alec and blew him a kiss.

“I don’t see why you get to carry a gun,” Alec said peevishly.

“Because remember your twelfth birthday when you got a BB gun and you and Jace went outside to shoot bottles and you accidentally shot Dad in the ass?”

“That was only the once,” Alec protested, “and Jace was distracting me. I’m a better shot now.”

“Kids,” Magnus cut in sharply. “Can you all shelve this for a moment? We’ve got a body to look at. Murder yadda yadda.”

Izzy followed him inside the lobby where the manager was waiting for them. Magnus pulled out his badge again, then the manager explained that housekeeping found the body during a routine cleaning. The room had been empty for the past forty-eight hours and had been checked after the last guests left. The only I.d. in the room was a passport that identified the victim as a foreign national, important enough to get it kicked up to the FBI.

“I’m going to need all security footage for the last forty-eight hours,” Magnus said. "Never mind, make that seventy-two."

“I don’t want to do this,” the manager began, a reedy man in an elegant suit, “but if I could see your--”

Magnus reached into his breast pocket and pulled out some folded papers, trying not to gloat. It was unbecoming if satisfying. “Your warrant.”

The trip to the judge’s house and subsequent ass-chewing for showing up at 3 am was totally worth it. Magnus still knew how to do his job right. It was just every other aspect of his life that was turning to shit.

The manager looked over the warrant and nodded unhappily, tugging at his sleeves.

No matter how upscale, and this was one of the best, seedy shit always went down in hotels. Cheap gilt and gold leaf could only cover up so much griminess; in his experience, Magnus found the only difference between pay by the hour hotels and nice ones like this was the number of dollars involved in the transactions.

Magnus left the manager fretting in the empty lobby and headed up to the third floor, noting the exits and general layout on his way to the elevators. Swanky. Maybe one day he’d bring Alec here, if only Alec would deign to love him and only him forever. He wanted to see Alec smile, he wanted his sharp wit, he wanted to watch the way Alec ran his hands through his hair, dark silky strands slipping through his fingers--

“Are you perving on my brother again?” Izzy cut into his daydreams. Damnit, this was why he didn’t do partners. There was no need to clarify which brother. The day Magnus perved on Jace was the day he would join a monastery, shave his head, and become celibate in both mind and body.

“Mayyyybe,” Magnus said, drawing the word out and forcing himself to picture Alec naked and doing a winsome little shimmy. Aside from being entertainingly implausible, it distracted him from the large, frightening feeling that welled up in his chest whenever he thought about Alec too long.

“You always get this weird, sweaty look on your face when you’re thinking about him,” Izzy said. The elevator dinged and the doors slid open.

When they got to the room, a small cloister of worried hotel staff in the hallway, Magnus pushed through them and cautiously edged the door open. The smell was unmistakable: decomposing body, the coppery scent of blood, the sharp tang of fear. Some bad shit went down here.

Magnus stepped into the center of the room, standing right over the body when out of the corner of his eye, he saw the curtains to the right twitch. He signaled to Izzy to stay back. She was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, but she didn’t have the same benefit of years of hand to hand training that he had.

Izzy took a silent step back towards the door, neatly cutting off the exit, and Magnus advanced forward. Whoever it was must have been watching, because the dark figure of a man darted out behind him and crossed the room. He was tall and slim, hair so pale it nearly looked silver in the half-light. It took Magnus the split-second the suspect needed to get to the door to catalog that and a large dark smudge on his pale forearm.

The man ducked past Izzy, pushing her into the wall, and slipped through the door, startled shouts coming from the hallway.

Magnus cursed. "You okay?"

"Fine," she said.

"Then call for more backup," he yelled at Izzy, already chasing the suspect down the hall, through the side door, and up three flights of stairs. By the third flight, his legs were burning; by the next, he was gasping for breath, still five arm's lengths behind. That obnoxious motherfucker was in shape, Magnus thought.

Above him, the suspect hit the door to the roof, and it flew open with a loud metallic clang, banging into the wall behind it hard enough to crack the plaster.

Magnus grabbed the railing and swung himself around the landing, not breaking stride. He flew through the open door and watched the suspect climb onto the roof ledge. "Stop," Magnus wheezed. "You've got nowhere to -- oh _fuck_."

The suspect glanced back over his shoulder once before taking a running leap off the side.

Magnus ran to the edge and peered over the side just as his phone buzzed. Impatiently, he accepted the call. "Bane."

It was Ragnor, the senior agent in charge of his division. "Have you made any progress at the Four Seasons? Why are you out of breath? I told you, you can do whatever you want on your own time, but on Bureau time--"

"Ah, it's not that, sir. I'm currently in pursuit of a suspect," Magnus said. At the base of the building was a huge pool and Magnus watched the suspect struggle to paddle to the edge. A poor swimmer. Of course, it would have to be a fucking pool.

"Ah, well, be careful and carry on," Ragnor said.

"Permission to follow the suspect over the balcony," Magnus said, climbing onto the ledge. For better or worse, he was a top-notch swimmer. His stepfather made sure of that.

"Did you hear anything I just said? Permission denied," Ragnor yelled over the phone, tinny voice blaring painfully into Magnus' ear. "Permission fucking _DENIED_ \--"

"Too late," Magnus said, already in freefall. He was going to ruin his phone. Again.

"--oh goddamit," Ragnor said a moment before Magnus hit the water with a cold shock. This was the worst part. For a moment, Magnus couldn't tell which way was up; he forced his heartbeat to slow, ignored the stinging in his eyes, and watched the direction the bubbles were moving and followed them up.

He broke the surface, greedily pulling air into his lungs and looking around. The suspect was climbing out of the side of the pool. Magnus swam over, lunged forward and grabbed his legs, yanking with all of his strength and putting his weight into it, automatically ducking his head to avoid the inevitable boot to the face. The suspect fell back with a grunt, swinging his left arm around and catching Magnus across the jaw. For a moment, Magnus saw stars. He shook his head, not letting go, when the man went worryingly limp in his arms. Caught by surprise, Magnus hauled him up and back, keeping their heads above the water. He was concentrating so hard on staying afloat that he felt the suspect tense a split-second before the elbow that came up and caught him neatly in the chest. Magnus felt all the air leave his lungs with a whoosh and fell back, arms slack.

He barely heard the splash as the man climbed out, the sirens in the distance, the beep of security walky-talkies, over the roaring in his ears. The chlorine stung his nose, his mouth, his eyes, as Magnus struggled to push back unpleasant memories and tread water.

When Magnus shakily emerged from the pool, he saw a positively enormous set of feet, then a large hand reached down and pulled him up. He would know those elegant fingers anywhere. They prominently featured in his daydreams and even more frequently, his naughtier fantasies. In his dreams, Alec held him as lovingly and carefully as one of his Petri dishes full of unspeakably disgusting samples.

Maybe if he became a big ball of mold, Magnus thought sadly, Alec would love him, too.

“Hullo,” Magnus said, feeling a bit water-logged. He probably looked pretty bad. He pushed his hair back self-consciously. “I thought I told you to stay in the car.”

“I was worried about you two,” Alec said impassively. It astonished Magnus, absolutely infuriated him that he could read every other person on this planet like an open book, but Alec was still a great big fucking mystery. “Your suspect got away.”

“There’s always tomorrow. They can’t run from me,” Magnus said grandiosely before swaying on his feet.

“Except they just did,” Alec pointed out, steadying him with an arm around his shoulders. Magnus could get used to this, the warm weight of Alec, the solid body against his.

Alec had a hotel blanket slung over his shoulder and draped it around Magnus’ shoulders. “You fell really far. Like, stupid far."

"You saw that?" Magnus managed. "Did you see how brave I was, darling?"

Alec's eyebrows lowered like two storm clouds over something that looked dead sexy in a stained hoodie. "I suppose brave could be one word for it."

"And were you concerned, my diaphanous love?" Magnus asked in his most pleasing and sensuous voice. The effect was ruined somewhat by the fact that water kept dripping in his eyes and Magnus was desperately trying to look sexy through one open eye, the other burning and squeezed shut. He probably looked like a drunken pirate.

Just then, Izzy came running up. "Oh my god, are you okay?" Alec dropped his arm and abruptly pulled away.

"Just fine. I'm a big, tough guy," Magnus said with a bravado he didn’t feel. He kind of wanted a hug.

"Yeah, okay," Izzie said. "Come on, tough guy, let's get you to the bus to get checked out."

"Please," Magnus gasped, on the verge of collapse.

As they headed towards the bright, flashing lights of the ambulance, Izzy's arm around him, head tucked up beneath his chin, Magnus looked around for Alec but didn't see him. He had faded back into the crowd of cops and techs flooding the crime scene as if he were never there at all.


	3. oh, how the tables have turned... again...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Pardon me while I vomit forever," Magnus said.

 

 

 

 

 

Whenever Magnus entered the forensics wing of the Institute, he always seemed to regret it. Everything from the stained glass windows to the pristine steel surface of the forensic platform in the center of the room seemed to scream: you don’t belong here. It was built to be intimidating, remanents of a bygone era overlaid with the impersonality of science. 

But Magnus did not get into the FBI by being a coward.

He got into the FBI because he thought it would sound cool. 

Alec was leaning over the steel table, peering at the body stretched out in front of him. His brow was furrowed on his splendid visage, which was twisted in a grimace of distaste. He looked like a grouchy kitten. Magnus was so charmed. 

“I didn’t think bodies ever bothered you, Alexander,” Magnus said, flashing his badge at security and stepping up onto the forensic platform, just to watch the way Alec’s left eye twitched. 

“It’s Alec and they don’t.” Alec had begun carefully laying out a bunch of gleaming instruments on a steel tray: forceps, curettes, scalpels, and a long hook on a wooden rod plucked directly from Magnus' nightmares. "Just taking care of a little problem before Iz starts the official autopsy."

He'd watched Alec work before, of course, but Magnus never got bored of watching Alec's measured, precise movements, the way he pursed his lips and slowed his breathing. Alec once told him that the body naturally held its breath when under stress, but that makes your hands shake, your vision blur. The best way to handle it was to breathe through it and keep going.

"Are you afraid of snakes?” Alec asked casually.

"What has Isabelle told you?" Magnus yelped in a deeply masculine manner and Alec looked up, startled. There was the one case with the house infested with snakes and yes, Magnus might have screamed a little bit when one unexpectedly slithered out of the closet he'd opened, but Izzy had sworn to secrecy. Some things were supposed to be _sacred_ between partners.

"Nothing," Alec said, blinking

"Oh." Magnus could feel himself relaxing a little bit. He didn't relish the thought of Alec thinking of him as anything other than impossibly strong and brave and handsome. “Well, I don’t love them,” he confessed, unsure of where this conversation was going and displeased. His job was to anticipate the sudden turns conversations took. It was how he outwitted suspects, made his living righting the injustices of the world. Also, it was a handy tool for picking up people in bars.

Alec didn't respond, staring down at the body on the table and chewing his bottom lip pensively. They were chapped, skin rough and flaky where he was anxiously working the tender skin between sharp white teeth.

Because he was busy studying Alec (like always), it took Magnus far longer than it should have to realize something unnerving: the body was moving. It wasn't the usual build-up of gasses and bloating, but the abdomen was pulsating irregularly.  The effect was unsettling and not in the usual way that being near Alec always made him feel light-headed, slightly dizzy and uncertain.

"What the hell," Magnus said, disbelieving. He watched as Alec pulled on a surgical mask followed by latex gloves, then grabbed the nearest scalpel. "Are you sure you should be doing that?"

“Not really,” Alec said, sighing and looking down at the body, “but I have to do it anyway. You ready, Clarence?”

“Clarence?”

Alec seemed a little embarrassed, cheeks flushed a fetching light pink. “I like to name the John Does that come through here."

"Any particular reason why?"

Alec said, "I always think that if it was Izzy or Jace or someone else I loved lying on a cold slab, I wouldn't want them to be Jane or John Doe, barely even a human for the person doing the autopsy. It seems -- I don't know -- kinder? To name them?" 

"It's very kind," Magnus murmured, cutting a quick glance at him, feeling oddly tender. “You know, sometimes fear is a good thing. It lets us know that we’re about to take a risk with big consequences. But some risks are worth taking, Alexander.” 

It was cold here, the artificial lights reflected off the table, the surgical tray, and somewhere nearby, a large nebulous feeling just out of his periphery, all the more frightening for how Magnus couldn't put a name to it. 

“I guess,” Alec agreed doubtfully and started making a long cut over the breastbone. When he got to the abdomen, enlarging the ragged incision that was already there, Magnus saw what was causing the irregular movement.

He nearly reeled back in horror when he realized there was -- oh sweet fucking  _god_ \-- there was a snake in there. Magnus wanted to die. Why was his job so gross?

"The body was moved from the original kill site to the hotel."

"Oh fuck," Magnus breathed. 

"I know right? Seems like a lot of work just to kill someone,” Alec continued, totally oblivious. “But I've never understood killing people in general. More work to kill them than to just bribe or frame them.”

“Well,” Magnus pointed out gently, “it's also morally reprehensible.” Sometimes scientists just baffled him with their insistence on logic and practicality. The only thing that Magnus was certain of was that a) Kentucky Fried Chicken was super overrated and b) life was anything but logical or practical.

“Yeah, also that,” Alec agreed easily. “I usually like snakes but this is a lot even for me." He dropped the scalpel on an empty tray and grabbed the strange hook off the instrument tray, using it to grab the snake and pull it out. "The temperature dropped a few days ago and I guess with a fresh body, the snake just went to the warmest place it could find," Alec said, holding the snake eye level and looking frighteningly delighted. "But I suppose it's natural and it's beautiful.”

"Pardon me while I vomit forever," Magnus said and looked away, taking a couple of deep breaths until he felt his lunch settle. When he turned back, Alec had twisted around and was looking at him. He'd deposited the snake in a clear bin at his feet, ready to be taken back to his lab where Alec would undoubtedly tirelessly spoil and croon sweet nothings at the vile creature.

“Are you okay?” Alec said, eyes wide over his plain white surgical mask. Magnus noted the flat khaki-green of his eyes, shot through with shards of rust and amber, and realized he'd never even noticed the eye color of the man he supposedly loved, too busy chasing him to pay much attention to who he was chasing. If anyone had asked before what color eyes Alec had, Magnus might've just said "sexy" to cover up his general confusion. 

Alec looked like he was about to say something, but just then, the body farted loudly.

Magnus was quietly appalled. “I always forget bodies do that. Gross, Clarence.”

Alec chuckled softly, eyes crinkling appealingly over the mask. “Anything else you're afraid of that I should know about?" He looked surprisingly thoughtful, waiting.

_You_ , Magnus thought. He smoothed down his tie nervously, electric blue to match his socks. Ragnor had frowned at his outfit in the office earlier but hadn't said anything. "Ah, Acid washed jeans," Magnus said, already a little disappointed in himself. For a moment, he maybe had a chance to forge a real connection with Alec. But he let it slip through his fingers again, like always. He told himself that he would do anything to make Alec his, but when push came to shove, he avoided it. Real human connection costs a part of yourself. It took faith and hope and bravery.

And in the end, Magnus was afraid.

Alec nodded his head, looking disappointed but unsurprised. "The nineties were an underappreciated decade."

Magnus couldn't argue with that. "You'll cc me on the report once you're finished?"

"Of course."

He could leave it like this, he could walk away right now, but Alec had never shared anything of himself with Magnus before and it felt like a wasted opportunity. And he'd done enough of that in his life.

Magnus touched Alec's elbow to get his attention. “The key to having no fear is having nothing to lose. Remember that.”

“You’ve got Izzy,” Alec pointed out. 

Magnus looked at him strangely. He didn't see what that had to do with anything. “Yes, I suppose so.”

 

\---

 

On his way out, he ran into Jace, exiting Clary's office. "So, I heard there's something gross going on? How wretched is it on a scale of one to I need to give my therapist a call on my lunch break?"

"8.5," Magnus said. "You won't cry or shit yourself, but you'll probably want to do both."

"Hm," Jace said, "that's every day for me." He tucked in his shirt, light blue security oxford into stiff navy slacks. Magnus hadn't cared much for Jace when he first met him, still didn't, but two of the people he cared about most in the world loved him, so he and Jace were pretty much stuck with each other.

And Jace wasn't all bad, once he got past the annoying bravado and goofy hair. Perhaps people had the same complaints about him.

"Trust me, 99% of what goes on around here makes me want to hurl. It's the reason I work security and not forensics. Also, I have about fourteen less PhDs than everyone else here."

“You’re not--that stupid,” Magnus said a little awkwardly. 

"Thanks, Magnus. You're a peach," Jace said, a little sardonically. "I'm aware of what I am. There's nothing wrong with me."

To Magnus, it didn't sound like Jace really believed that.

"It’s just tough when you have siblings that are so special," Jace said absently, turning to watch Alec enter notes into a laptop in between making doe eyes at his new snake. Magnus shuddered, filled with revulsion and envy at the snake.

“You’re a good man," Magnus said to Jace. "Trust me, in this day and age, that’s pretty special too.”

 

\---

 

He and Izzy cracked four more cases over the next couple of months, but Magnus was no closer to cracking Alec’s tough outer shell. 

It was the day before Christmas when he got a call about a mysterious vault found at a construction site. Once it was dug out of twelve tons of concrete and sediment, Magnus had it brought back to the Institute, grinning as he imagined the furious look on Izzy’s face when he'd come bearing his dubious gift. 

He followed the truck to the Institute and supervised its placement on a dolly, taking over to wheel it past security and through the front door. It was a skeleton crew at the Institute, just Izzy, Alec, Clary, and a couple straggling interns finishing up last minute projects before the long holiday off. And Jace pacing restlessly in front of the stairs leading up to the forensic platform, right shoe squeaking annoyingly. 

“Merry Christmas, all!” Magnus announced loudly, brandishing his filthy safe proudly like it was the last donut in a police station. 

“What in the hell is that?” Izzy said, furiously crossing the room. 

“A safe,” Magnus explained, grinning and patting the top. “I call it Herbert.”

“Seriously? A body right now, Magnus?"

“Hey, now, no one said it was a body. It was found buried underground at a construction site. You guys are a scientific institute that processes all kinds of artifacts. Maybe it’s Al Capone’s safe.”

“I’ll call Geraldo,” Izzy said. “Buried underground, you said?”

“Yeah, in a place unmarked on the blueprints.”

“Dead body,” they both said at once. 

Izzy, remembering that she was supposed to be angry, said, “You don’t get to dump a body on us the day before Christmas then waltz off to spend the weekend drinking with your Swedish masseuse.” 

“I feel like I’m interrupting something,” Alec said, coming up behind her, already holding a drill and safety mask.

“I would never,” Magnus protested mildly. “I plan to stay while we solve this really old and boring case.”

“If this guy’s been dead for about seventy years,” Jace said, peering at the safe curiously, “why can’t he wait for like, another seventy-two hours?”

“Weirdly,“ Izzy said, “I agree with Jace.”

“How did you know that?” Magnus asked Jace. “70 years is really specific?”

“Oh, yeah, the acorn pins." He tapped the hinges. "It looks like a Herring Hall Marvin.”

Magnus blinked at him, and Jace shrugged and gestured at his nametag. “Security. I work security.”

“I’ll stay and take a look at it,” Alec volunteered, "make the prelim notes and you can go over it when you get back." He walked around the safe, studying it, running his drill against the edges. 

“Oh no you don’t,” Izzy said. “If Jace and I have to go home for our awkward family Christmas dinner, then so do you.”

“I can stay with Alec,” Magnus said, feeling his heart speed up. _Ok, be cool_ , Magnus thought to himself. _It's no big deal, just everything you've ever wanted._

“Don’t you want to go home?” Alec asked, stripping off his dark blue lab coat and button-up shirt, tossing them over the railing and leaving him in dress slacks and a fitted black tank top. 

Magnus made a gurgling sound. 

"You okay, dude?" Jace asked. "Your nostrils are super flared."

"Ugh, he's fine," Izzy said, sounding disgusted. 

Alec was already donning the safety mask, drill in hand. Magnus honestly thought he'd never looked sexier. Who knew power tools did it for him? It was a wonder he could walk through Home Depot without popping a boner.

“Home to what? The bottle of vodka in my freezer?” Magnus asked, remembering Alec's question a shade too late for it to be anything but awkward. Catarina was out of the country doing charity work and making everyone look bad, and he might convince Ragnor to make the trek to Brooklyn, but Ragnor detested all holidays, general good cheer, and making Magnus too happy. 

“Then I guess it’s just you and me,” Alec replied, looking not entirely displeased. He snapped the mask in place and turned the drill on, counting under his breath and then placing the cutting edge about an inch above the safe's tumbles.

As a general rule, Magnus liked to be adored by his paramours, but in Alec’s case, he would take simply not detested. 

“Whatever. See ya, fools,” Jace said with a cackle, barely audible over the whine of drilling into metal.

He and Izzy disappeared into Izzy's office, and he came out a moment later with his coat slung over his arm. Just as he was about to leave, Alec pulled off the door to the safe and the alarms started blaring, red lights lined up across the ceiling flashing in all directions, double-doors sliding shut with a final-sounding hiss. 

"No no no," Jace said, scrambling to the doors and trying to pry them open with his fingernails. 

Izzy came running out of her office, hands over her ears. "What the hell?" she yelled above the din, going to the override panel on the wall and punching in the access numbers.

“Oh jeez, not again,” Alec said, putting his drill down and looking up at the flashing lights. “Was it something I did?”

Magnus glanced around him. He hadn't seen this many excited nerds running around since he once chased a suspect through a D&D convention. 

“We’re on lockdown,” Izzy explained to Magnus, donning the emergency protocol gear. It looked not unlike a giant condom. “No one exits or enters the building until we determine what mysterious gas Alec unleashed into the air.” She glared at Jace, who had his knuckles pressed to his mouth in an effort not to laugh. "This isn't funny and you need your PPE."

Jace patted his taser on his hip. "This is all the protection I need."

"Still not a real gun," Magnus muttered.

Clary rolled out of her office on an office chair. “Nice going, Alec,” she said, then rolled right back in.

“I didn’t -- not on purpose,” Alec protested. 

“You’ll do anything to get out of going to Christmas dinner,” Jace accused. 

“All right, everyone, settle down. I’m putting a call into the CDC," Izzy said, "then someone has to call mom. She's the director of the Institute. We have to notify her."

All three siblings looked at each other uneasily.  "Not it," Izzy and Jace yelled simultaneously. Alec sighed deeply.

"Your mom's not _that_ scary, right?" Magnus asked him. 

"Have you met her," Alec asked flatly, staring down at his phone like his mother was his own personal kryptonite, and weren't so many parents?

Magnus glanced back at Alec, who was standing in the middle of the forensic platform, looking a little lost, brow furrowed and impossibly young. It was probably the most vulnerable Magnus had seen him look since Jace made fun of his enthusiasm for eukaryotic algae, and Magnus wanted nothing more than to comfort him; but here, surrounded by Alec's family and one friend, in the place where Alec spent most of his regimented life, it was not Magnus' place to offer it. And he wasn't sure who was mostly to blame for it -- Alec, who constantly rebuffed him, or Magnus, who know how to say the exact right thing to everyone except the person he most wanted to -- but it all amounted to the same in the end: they were on separate surfaces, might as well have been in separate countries for all the distance between them. 

Magnus could have been so good for him, if Alec had just given him half a chance. 

There must have been a time, a singular moment, when Magnus could have changed the nature of their relationship, said something slightly different and been more to Alec than his sister’s annoying, pervy partner. 

Magnus swallowed against the lump in his throat, the tide of regret rising.

"I should probably go make that call," Alec said, sounding resigned. Alec disappeared into his lab and helplessly, Magnus watched him go. 

“You’re good for him, you know,” Izzy said, flinging herself into a chair next to the computer used for notes during exams. 

"Oh yeah?" Magnus said glumly. The more he pushed to get close to Alec, the further he seemed to push him away. Magnus would like to be whatever Alec needed, but try as he might, he just couldn't seem to be anybody but himself, even when he desperately wished to be.

Izzy leaned back in her chair, legs crossed, hair a lovely dark cascade past her shoulders. She made such a pretty picture -- smart, vivacious Izzy -- that Magnus had a pang of regret that he fell for her irritable older brother and not her. But the heart wants what the stupid fucking heart wants. "My brother is--not overly demonstrative, but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel things. I think he got resigned to not having what he wanted for so long, he forgot how to want anything at all. I think that's why he went into palynology. His whole life, he’s always been looking down, studying the ground so he never had to see what he was missing.”

"And he's doing what now?" Magnus asked, eyes on Alec's lab.

"Lately," she said, "he’s been looking up at you.”

 

\---

 

Simon leans forward in his leather chair, notepad long forgotten, wedged in between the cushion and the armrest. "And then--"

Magnus pauses. "You should blink, Simon."

"Yeah, I just -- there's _so_ much UST. Compelling stuff, man. Compelling stuff."

“Glad to entertain,” Magnus says dryly. 

“I feel like we’re wandering slightly off topic, though. This is about your partnership--”

“Do you want the whole story or not?” Magnus asks sharply. “You can’t take random bits and pieces and try to see the bigger picture. You don‘t know enough about it to know what you're missing.” 

That was what Izzy taught him and what he’d been missing before. She looked at the microscopic, handed him the pieces of the puzzle he hadn't known he'd been missing, and he stepped back and looked at the larger picture, shuffling bits of information around to make sense of them in a constantly shifting landscape. 

“Of course.”

Magnus stretches, hearing his back pop. He's been talking all morning and his throat is dry. Outside, the trees are blooming, and it's another beautiful day. He might eat lunch in the park. He would normally swing by the Institute on his break, but he's not allowed to while he's under pending investigation. His mouth twitches unhappily. He needs--well, he just needs.

For whatever the lab geeks are to him, they've somehow become his family. He hates being alone now. 

“You seem sad.” Simon pulls out his notebook and flips it shut, tucking it up beneath his arm. Magnus can see the stickers now and recognizes none of the bands. He feels old.

“Well, I’m being investigated,” he says.

“This isn’t about your fitness for duty as an agent. Everyone knows that you’re the best. It’s about your complicated relationship with your partner and the Institute and whether that compromises investigations.”

"I think we should both eat," Magnus says, staring morosely out the window. "We've still got a lot of story to get through."

Simon clears his throat and leans back. "Yeah, of course. This is where we'll leave it for now then."

Magnus brightens considerably as another thought occurs to him. “Plus, next, there’s the shower.”

“Wait, _what now_?” Simon asks, dropping his notebook.

 

 


	4. blame it on the lung fungus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Excuse the fuck out of me?” Magnus said delicately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: non-graphic mentions of child abuse, far less than what is shown in canon

 

When Alec emerged from his lab looking stunned and depressed, Izzy was waiting for him, red-faced and biting her lip. “The CDC is on their way. In the meantime, I’ve been given explicit instructions.”

“Yes?” Magnus asked suspiciously.

“You and Alec need to get to the decontamination shower ASAP.”

“Excuse the fuck out of me?” Magnus said delicately.

“Shower, now!” Izzy barked and shoved Alec towards a set of doors at the back of the Institute, where Izzy had once told him held shipping and storage. Neither Alec nor Izzy's offices were back there, and Jace sometimes emerged looking guilty, so Magnus assiduously avoided that section of the Institute.

Back there, Magnus found out, was another set of doors that lead to a tiny tiled bathroom with a frightening plastic shower that Magnus was pretty sure once belonged to Norman Bates.

“Look,” Alec said, unbuttoning his shirt, “this doesn’t have to be awkward.” It was the biggest lie Magnus had been told since Alec self-righteously declared he was a great dancer, then spent the evening of the Institute charity ball doing a slow version of the Gangnam Style Dance. Magnus had looked on, charmed and horrified and already hilariously way in over his head.

Quickly, Magnus spun around, putting his back to Alec. “You go first.”

“I think Izzy meant for us to shower together--”

“I’m good,” Magnus interrupted because he knew damn well what Izzy meant, but he doesn’t know how to explain his raging hard-on. If he showered with Alec, Magnus was certain he would either weep at his perfect beauty or spontaneously orgasm, perhaps embarrassingly at the same time.

“You really want to risk getting an incurable disease rather than take a shower with me?” Alec asked.

Magnus must have been hearing things, because Alec sounded a little--hurt, maybe.

“No, it’s not that. I just--I’m shy,” he lied, putting his hands in his pockets in order not to slap himself in the face.

“O-okay,” Alec said and Magnus heard the shower turn on, the small yelp Alec made when the water hit him. “Oh fuck,” Alec said, teeth chattering. “I forgot these weren’t heated.”

Magnus imagined what Alec must look like: tall, beautiful body with water cascading down his front. It was like something from an erotic video Magnus once watched on redtube with one eye closed because the guy bore a passing resemblance to Alec. In all honestly, Magnus' life had taken a steep downward trajectory since meeting Alec.

The water shut off and Magnus heard the sound of a towel being grabbed, and he turned around. The reality was significantly different from the fantasy: Alec’s hair was flat, dripping in his face, lips chalky-blue around the edges. He looked miserable, like a drowned rat, his chest hair soggy and matted against his skin.

And yet, still, Magnus thought he’d never looked better. He would have taken this reality over a fantasy any day.

“Your turn,” Alec said, carelessly shaking out his hair and sending sprays of water everywhere. God, Izzy was right, he was a Neanderthal. Alec hitched his towel up higher on his hips and left the bathroom, his feet making funny little squelching sounds in his wake.

 

\---

 

The CDC announced everyone had possibly contracted a rare fungal infection that got into the lungs caused by coccidioides organisms, and they were all expected to take a cocktail of prophylactic drugs to make infection less likely. Rare side effects of the cocktail included hallucinations and euphoria.

“Sounds nice,” Jace said. “Where can I get this lung fungus?”

"It might have already taken hold in your system," the doctor from the CDC patiently explained. "The side effects are from the prophylactic, not the fungus. If you've contracted it, we start treatment immediately. If it's ineffective, you die."

“Oh,“ Jace said, subdued.

“Treatment includes a series of six injections into the base of the skull,” he said through his white biohazard suit. He stepped through the large plastic sheeting hanging over every doorway and window, not that they were allowed out of the building. “Symptoms mimic a common cold and should manifest between before 48 hours. If you make it until then, you should be in the clear.”

“So, we’re going to miss Christmas,” Izzy said.

"There there," the doctor said, sounding deeply unconvinced, "I'm sure you'll all be fine."

Magnus silently added the CDC to his mounting list of enemies.

“We will allow phone calls to family,” the doctor said. “We’ll bring food and any essentials by shortly. Please make a list and call us if there’s anything else you need.”

"This requires booze," Jace announced once the doctor left, twirling his keys obnoxiously. He was really proud of them, even though they only unlocked the janitor's closet. Magnus supposed king of an anthill was still technically royalty.

"We really shouldn't mix alcohol and Amphotericin B," Izzy said.

Surprising everyone, Alec hopped down off the stainless steel exam table where he'd been sitting, kicking his legs and watching silently. He was dressed in sweatpants and a stretched out t-shirt that gapped at the neck. "I can probably do something about that."

"Can I help?" Jace asked.

"Yeah," Alec said with a snort, "you can be my lovely assistant."

Magnus highly doubted anyone had ever referred to Jace as lovely before with anything other than vague sarcasm, but watched Jace lean over and whisper something into Alec's ear and Alec grinned, small, private, teeth flashing so quickly it would have been easy to miss if he hadn't been looking for it, and he was hit by a fierce wave of longing.

He saw their heads bent low together, Alec’s shadow to Jace’s bright, gleaming hair. He wanted to make Alec smile like that.

“It’s always been the two of them together in their own private little club,” Izzy said, coming up behind him, her mouth a soft moue of unhappiness. “Alec has a degree in Forensic Pathology too, did you know that?”

“No,” Magnus said, startled.

“Hm. He’s been groomed to take over this place since he was little. Mom never even considered me for the job." She shook her head, and Magnus could see her pushing her unhappiness down, tucking it away into a secret place where she put everything that hurt and confused her. It astonished him that for a woman who examined everything up close, she never felt her own pain was worth understanding.

Magnus slung his arm around her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. "Should we go over the case?"

"Yeah," Izzy said. "Better get to it before the liquor starts flowing."

He followed Izzy into her office, the walls painted a dark, sensuous red, the bookshelves stacked haphazardly with titles that made Magnus’ eyes cross trying to read them and ancient weapons that looked like torture devices. It was sexy, academic, and vaguely frightening, much like Izzy herself.

"Did you finally get the hotel to turn over the security tapes?"

"Yeah, took a judge order, subpoena, and multiple threats, but I shouldn't have wasted my time," Magnus said, dressed in a spare security guard uniform. He looked not unlike a sexy mailman. He suspected the uniform was Jace's but preferred not to know for certain. He was pleased to note it was tight in the shoulders and arms.

With a sigh, Magnus unbuttoned and rolled up his sleeves to the elbows, pulled his gold tie clip and cufflinks out of his pocket, and dropped them onto Izzy's desk with a careless thud. They were out of his price range, one left to him after his stepfather passed and the other a gift from an ex-girlfriend. Izzy said it was a bit morbid to wear momentoes of people who hated him, but Magnus liked to remind himself -- well, he didn’t know, exactly. Maybe everyone who should have loved him best but somehow didn't. Maybe all the ways he'd failed in life as much as succeeded.

Izzy looked at them unhappily, but wordlessly put them in her desk drawer for safekeeping.

Magnus continued, “The videos had been edited pretty heavily.”

“Ohhh, obstruction?”

“Nah, they changed hands so many times by the time I reviewed them, I’d never be able to make anything stick, which I guess was the purpose."

“Shame,” Izzy said. “I do like arresting men in nice suits.”

"It was a very nice suit the manager had, wasn't it?" Magnus leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up on the edge of Izzy's desk, ignoring her exasperated sigh. "The sleeves were a bit long, though, weren't they? Strange since the breaks were correct on the pants."

"Where are you going with this? Maybe the man has cold wrists. People have cold wrists."

"I don't know," Magnus confessed. "I feel like I'm missing something obvious, but it's been a long day." He added piteously, "You know, with the lung fungus and all."

"Oh my god, you don't actually have Coccidioidomycosis."

"Hm, well," Magnus said doubtfully, "that remains to be seen."

They were going over case notes when Clary came to get them. “I’ve been working on a little something,“ she said shyly. Out of them all, Clary was by far the most normal. She was a grad art student that worked at the Institute digitally adding soft tissue markers on bone to reconstruct the faces of the lost souls, both old and new.

Magnus and Izzy followed her into her studio where the few sniffly interns sat huddled in the corner. It would be terrible, Magnus thought, to spend the holidays locked up with your bosses and waiting to find out if you had a fungal infection. He shot them an apologetic grin and one smiled tremulously back.

Clary grabbed her iPad and tapped in a few commands, pulling up a 3-D rendering of a huge Christmas tree, twinkling lights and all.

"Welcome to the 21st century," Magnus breathed, eyes wide.

Clary made a fake tree using million-dollar state of the art technology generally used to reconstruct the faces of the dead. He doubted a bunch of lab geeks, one art student, and a beleaguered, love-sick FBI agent awkwardly standing around a virtual Christmas tree was what the Institute had in mind when purchasing it, but there was something deeply magical about taking technology that had such a depressing purpose and using it to make a small group of people a little less homesick.

Izzy linked her arm in his and laid her head on his shoulder. "I'm glad we're under quarantine," she said. "I was worried about you spending the holidays alone."

Magnus squeezed her hand. He didn't know how else to respond.

Alec and Jace emerged from his lab sometime later, passing out beakers of clear liquid to everyone.

“Some Christmas cheer I cooked up,” Alec explained.

“It’s nearly pure alcohol,” Jace chimed in helpfully. "Alec said he could've gotten the proof higher, but he didn't want to kill anyone."

"How responsible of him," Izzy said dryly, taking her glass.

Clary had already downed half her beaker. She once told Magnus drinking helped her deal with the general disgustingness of her job. Magnus was a little concerned for that girl.

“Can I legally drink this?” Magnus asked, eyeing the beaker suspiciously. The liquid inside was remarkably clear and odorless. If not for the flush on Clary’s normally pale cheeks, he’d think it was water.

Alec was holding his own beaker, staring down at Magnus' bare forearms. Magnus flexed a little just for show and winked at him. Alec quickly looked away.

“It’ll either get your super drunk or make you go blind,” Jace said, already sipping eagerly. He pushed his hair back out of his eyes and it immediately fell forward again.

"Get a haircut," Magnus said.

"Hey, Magnus, the 1950's called and it wants its pompadour back."

"Ridiculous comeback," Magnus muttered, patting his hair down a bit. But Magnus had never been one to back down from a challenge, or the promise of a challenge, or even a vague and nebulously insulting statement. Besides, _Alec was watching_. “Bottom’s up,” Magnus said, saluting Jace before downing the whole beaker. It burned the entire way down. It tasted like eating a hearty breakfast of fire and brimstone.

“Good stuff,” he wheezed and held his glass out for another round.

 

\---

 

Later, Magnus wandered out of Izzy’s office, where Izzy and Clary were busy arguing about who was the best doctor, nine or ten. They might as well have been speaking nerd-ese for all Magnus could follow the conversation. There seemed to be a rose involved somehow.

Magnus thought Clary was one of the normals. As it turned out, she was just a squint in _disguise_.

Feeling distinctly betrayed, Magnus wandered up the stairs to the second landing, where there was a small alcove for employees to take their breaks. It was quiet and private and would give Magnus a moment alone to think, something that apparently no one here thought he did much of.

They'd be wrong, but he found the underestimation gave him the upper hand in office politics and interrogations.

When he arrived at the top, fingers skimming the metal railing, he wasn't alone.

Alec was standing at the edge, arms hooked over the rail and staring out over the forensic platform, lit only by a few sad strands of Chritmas lights some enterprising person had put up. Probably Clary. Magnus usually detested the sterility of it, but even he had to admit, with the multicolored lights down low and reflecting off all the straight, clean steel surfaces, there was a certain regimented beauty to it. It might not be his aesthetic, but it was an aesthetic.

"Didn't think this was how I'd be spending Christmas," Alec said, startling him. He didn't know Alec was aware of him.

“Sorry to take you away from your family,” Magnus said, feeling a little guilty. This was at least partly his fault. Okay, it was mostly his fault, but how was he supposed to know the safe held a body with a zombie fungus?

“It’s okay,” Alec said. “I’d rather be here than at home anyway.”

“What about Santa?" Magnus teased. "Or are you a non-believer."

Alec gave him an alarmed, pitying look, and Magnus had never seen the resemblance between Alec and his sister so strongly before.

“Isn’t that like asking if I believe in god?”

“Hey now,” Magnus protested weakly.

“Do I believe in a silent being that watches us and judges silently? No. I have my mother for that,” Alec said. “I believe in Einstein, Oppenheimer, Heisenberg."

“Well, that seems pretty lonely.”

"I think it's comforting, knowing that there are constant rules to the universe. I always know what to expect."

"Oh, sweetheart," Magnus said softly, "the only thing you can know for certain is that life will always surprise you."

Alec held his gaze for a moment, then turned around, hooking his folded arms over the railing behind him. He looked ridiculously appealing with his long legs stretched out. Magnus wanted to kiss every inch of him stupid. “So, what do you believe in, Magnus Bane?”

Magnus thought for a minute, polishing off his beaker and setting it down on a nearby table. “I believe bad things happen to good people. And I believe I’m here to right that wrong, as much as one man can, I suppose.” Without the distraction of alcolol and the usual bustle of the Institute, it smelled like bleach and something else: sharp, antiseptic. It reminded him of chlorine. He could practically smell it, the scent like a dozen tiny blades, the water burning his nasal passages, his eyes--

“Hey, are you okay?” Alec asked, hand touching Magnus’ arm.

Without having realized it, he'd closed his eyes. Magnus leaned into the touch, the feeling of Alec. It was on the tip of his tongue to lie, but he might die of a stupid lung fungus and his connection with Alec felt too new and fragile and precipitous. "I hate the water."

"You're a strong swimmer."

"Ah, well. My father believed in -- well, he believed if you were afraid of something, the only way to get over it was to get in over your head. Literally." Magnus held his body still to keep from shivering. "So, it made a mild fear into a full-blown phobia, but hey, at least I'm great at swimming." He automatically reached up to touch his tie clip but remembered it was tucked away in Izzy's office.

“I’m so sorry,” Alec said.

“It was a long time ago.”

"Still, no kid deserves that."

Magnus exhaled; it felt like a breath he'd been holding for thirty-five years. He opened his eyes and Alec was standing so very close. When he spoke, the words seemed pulled from some dark, ugly place that he'd closed off years ago. Magnus said, "I wanted to be a better man than him. That's the real reason I joined the FBI. I wanted to help people." He swallowed painfully. _I wanted to be worth something_. "That's what I believe in -- that people deserve to be saved."

“You’re such a good person,” Alec said softly. "I think you might just be the best person I've ever met."

Maybe it was the potential fungus talking, maybe it was the quiet confessions in the dark, but Alec was looking at him with something like fondness, eyes soft, lips parted. They both might die today or at the very least, end up with half a dozen large-bore needles jammed into the bases of their skulls, so Magnus felt like he should carpe the diem. He licked his lips, an unconscious echo of Alec earlier, and watched as Alec’s eyes carefully tracked the movement.

“We both might die tonight,“ Magnus said, voice hushed. It was a stretch, but it wasn't the worst pickup line he’d ever used. He wasn't sure if that said more about him personally or the utter wasteland of the New York dating scene.

Truth be told, Magnus had always assumed he’d die like a rock star: overdose on drugs in the middle of an orgy, not trapped in a cold lab with a bunch of emotionally-constipated scientists trying to calculate how to behave like normal human beings.

“That's _extremely_ unlikely--"

“Can I kiss you?” Magnus interrupted. Go big or go home. Get a kiss or get a horrible zombie fungus, more like, but Magnus would take it. He would take anything Alec offered him, because somehow Alec had wormed his way into Magnus’ heart and made a permanent place for himself in its booze-soaked ventricles.

"I want to, but I'm not sure it's a good idea," Alec said.

"Please?" Magnus asked. He stepped closer, removing the last inch of distance between them and lowered his eyelashes. "I want to kiss you. Can I?"

“Are popping joints the formation of bubbles in the synovial fluid as the joint is expanded and then rapidly collapsing, thus producing a sharp sound?”

“I have no fucking clue, you nerd," Magnus said affectionately, "but that sounds correct."

"Oh my god, yes, the answer is yes,” Alec said, rolling his eyes.

 

\---

 

Jace was in the atrium, trying to pry the doors open once again. Izzy was in the lab with Clary, arguing with a couple of increasingly desperate-looking interns who would probably rather be anywhere else.

On the walkway, it was just him and Alec, the soft slide of Alec's lips against his, the full feeling in his chest again, multiplied tenfold; Alec’s tongue stealing into his mouth as Magnus opened up to him, letting him take anything he wanted, fingers digging into Alec’s arms, helpless, sick and shaking with how much he wanted him.

How many times had he stared at these same lips: chapped, a little too lush to be entirely suitable for Alec's serious face? Too many times to count.

Magnus pulled back and Alec chased after him, peppering his cheek with butterfly-light kisses, large hands gently cupping his jaw.

“There’s a supply closet nearby," Magnus managed.

“Give me fifteen minutes to steal the keys from Jace,” Alec said, "and I'll meet you there."


	5. crimes against humanity and fashion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clary was too petite and much too ginger.

 

Magnus knocked on the door, half afraid Alec had changed his mind. After all, many things could happen in fifteen minutes: babies were born, cities crumbled, angry scientists decided they could do better than Magnus and go back to distilling dangerous alcohol with their brothers. Okay, the first two were not strictly true, but that last one just might be.

He needn't have worried, because nearly immediately, Alec opened the door and pulled Magnus inside. His hands were fumbling, looking for a zipper before Magnus could say, hey, these are actually button-fly.

"Ah," Magnus said, eyes wide.

Alec looked up and began drawing back. "You don't want to?"

"Let's not be hasty now," Magnus said hurriedly and grabbed Alec's hands and put them firmly back on his crotch, the absolute best place for Alec's hands at all times.

Alec grinned and unbuttoned his pants, slid them down off his hips. "Always wanted this, ever since you showed up at the Institute in that weird cosplay."

"Hm? What now?" Magnus asked.

"You know, the purple and green suit?"

"Hey, that wasn't cosplay, that was _style_ ," Magnus insisted, deeply offended. He'd texted a picture of his outfit for the day to Catarina and she said he looked _good_.

It was a weirdly convoluted conversation to be having while Alec’s hand was skimming the bulge in his pants through the thin cotton of his boxers. Thank fuck he wore his nice ones today. He sucked in a breath at the steady pressure, staring over Alec's shoulder a little sadly at the rows of hand soap and wondering if he’d ever think of janitor’s overalls quite the same way again.

"I even learned that stupid dance for you."

"The night of the fundraiser?" Magnus choked out, thinking back to that evening and remembering the second-hand embarrassment, the hot clench of want deep in his gut as he'd watched Alec awkwardly shuffle across the Institute floor. Alec pressed his lips to Magnus' neck, pushing down Magnus' underwear and taking him in hand. Magnus leaned forward into his touch with a groan. "That was some kind of absurd mating dance?"

"Jace said you would love it, I'm going to kill that asshole," Alec muttered.

Magnus winced as Alec's hand tightened. "Careful with the goods, love."

"Yeah, sorry," Alec said and let go. He stepped back and pulled off his shirt.

Once again, Magnus was floored, absolutely stunned by Alec, and he couldn't help but feel that this was dangerous; no one should have this much pull over him, certainly not a cranky nerd that watched the same fourteen episodes of Firefly on repeat and had, at best, ambivalent feelings about Magnus.

But Magnus never did know how to do what was best for himself.

He unbuttoned his shirt, shucked it off his shoulders and heard Alec suck in a sharp breath. “Hang on,” Magnus said, spitting into his palm. He was tempted to take this further. Magnus wanted Alec completely undressed, spread out on a bed while he slowly took him apart, but standing in a cramped janitor’s closet with his dick hanging out was good enough for now. It was better than nothing and Magnus had nothing plenty of times before.

Magnus shoved Alec's pants down. Luckily, he was wearing his sweats, and though Magnus would have liked to think it was for ease of access, he had the uncomfortable feeling that when not adhering to some weird personal and totally imaginary guideline, the love of his life was possibly a little bit of a slob. "Speaking of Jace, how did you get his keys?"

"I told him Clary hated his cologne, and that she told me it made him smell like a pervert. He's in the shower right now."

"Does she really think it makes him smell like a pervert?" Magnus asked, intrigued despite himself.

"No, but _I_ think it does."

“Ah, ok."

“We should make this fast,” Alec said on a low, breathy exhale. “Jace is going to notice his keys missing soon.”

"Can we please not talk about Jace when my hand is on your dick,” Magnus said, and pulled Alec out, taking both their cocks in hand.

It was messy and inelegant and entirely the wrong way to go about this, but Alec’s eyes were fevered and bright, his skin hot, soft, electric. Alec threw his head back and made a sound low in his throat and Magnus leaned forward to nip at his neck, right where he could feel the pulse beneath his tongue and held his mouth there, breathing in the sharp tang of Alec's sweat.

“Just-- oh _fuck_ ," Alec said.

“Eloquent.”

"Shut up," Alec said, then, "Yeah, just like that.” His hand clutched at Magnus’ side, the other slid around his back, where it dipped low, cupping his ass and hitching him forward.

Magnus jerked them slowly, completely ignoring Alec’s earlier advice, and watched Alec swallow, eyes scraping over his lower lip, slick with spit, his fanned eyelashes, dark and long, against his cheeks.

For a moment, Magnus forgot how to breathe. He was balancing on a tightrope, a thousand feet up with no safety net in sight. The only way through was forward.

Magnus twisted his hand gently and tightened his grip, speeding up, as Alec's breath hitched. He pressed his lips against Alec's, open and hot, licked at his teeth for a split-second before grinning.

Magnus didn't believe in God, or Santa, or coincidences, but in this shitty closet, wrapped up in Alec’s arms, Alec panting, back arched, Magnus could let himself believe in motherfucking Christmas miracles.

“Faster,” Alec said. "Oh fuck, Magnus, I’m--” He sucked in a harsh breath and his eyes closed, screwed tightly shut as he came, splashing hot like a brand against Magnus’ skin. Magnus finished himself off quickly, already mostly there, eyes raking down Alec’s neck, his bared chest, his wrinkled pants halfway down his thighs.

Magnus took a few minutes to catch his breath and released them both, twisting around to look for paper towels. He found an open box of toilet paper behind him, grabbed a roll and ripped the paper off with this teeth before wiping down his hand and doing the best he could with his dick before tucking himself away. He tossed it to the side and grabbed another wad of paper, turning to offer it to Alec, when he saw Alec staring at the ceiling, unblinking.

Magnus looked up. It was just a plain fluorescent light fixture, nothing exciting other than the fact that it had a ton of dead bugs trapped inside and desperately needed to be cleaned; ironic for a room full of cleaning supplies.

“The lights are so beautiful,” Alec murmured. "Like a dozen tiny, happy fireflies. Hey, guys, hiii."

“Alec?” Magnus said worriedly, trying to get his attention.

“So shiny,” Alec answered, then promptly passed out, Magnus lunging forward to catch him before he hit the ground.

“Oh, shit,” Magnus said.

 

\---

 

“In the closet, Magnus?" Simon asks, shocked.

“Oh dear, I’ve said too much,” Magnus says demurely.

Simon shakes his head. He looks like he might cry. Magnus feels slightly sorry for him; it's a hell of a first case to catch. "I'm not going to lie, this is kind of a lot. Wow."

"Well, why the hell not? We're both adults. I must have missed the part where the Janitor's closet was a sacred space never to be defiled by a down and dirty handjob. Neither one of us was on the clock."

No, technically, they were on a case of single-ply toilet paper.

"I honestly can't help myself, I'm equal parts horrified and fascinated," Simon says. "Please continue."

 

\---

 

Magnus pulled out his phone and wondered who to call. He could call Izzy but he was sure that Alec would never forgive him for letting his little sister find him with his pants around his ankles nor did he think Izzy would be able to stop laughing at Magnus' general misfortune. Ever.

Clary was too petite and much too ginger.

With a sigh, he texted Jace to meet him at the closet.

In the meantime, he awkwardly worked Alec's pants back up and pulled his shirt back on, feeling profoundly sorry for himself. Like Icarus before him, he'd flown too close to the sun, or he thought, squinting at the shelf before him, an industrial-sized jug of Draino. That metaphor didn't exactly work, but it had been a long night.

Just as he was finishing up, Magnus heard a knock on the door.

“Can I help you?” Jace asked suspiciously, showing the door open and taking in Alec laying on the floor, his general state of dishevelment, and Magnus' flushed face. Alec looked like an oversized, debauched milkmaid. Too late, Magnus realized what it must look like as Jace's eyes narrowed and his fingers twitched against his taser.

"I consider us acquaintances possibly bordering on friends, which is why I'm going to give you thirty seconds to explain what the hell's going on before I kick your ass," Jace said.

"You would lose."

"I would still do it," Jace said stubbornly.

Magnus looked over Jace appraisingly. He couldn't recall if he'd ever seen Jace before, really taken a good look at him. "Alec and I came back here for a little -- you know, and _things_ , you know, _progressed from there_. And then he started muttering about the shiny lights and passed out."

Jace held up a hand. "Okay, too many details about Alec's sex life. "

"Oh, so you can regale him with talks of your conquests but you can't return the favor?"

Jace blew out a hard breath and looked a little ashamed. "Shit, you're right. Okay, so. Um. Was it...tender and magical? Are you in love?"

"Oh, do shut up," Magnus snapped. "Help me move him."

"What? Why?"

"We need the doctors to look over him and we can hardly call them here. Alec would die of humiliation."

"No one has to know he was getting freaky with you."

"Why else would two grown men be in a closet together," Magnus demanded.

"Yeah, okay," Jace said quickly. "Take him to the employee break area and then get Izzy?"

“Er,” Magnus said eloquently. “What if he has the lung fungus? We should probably alert the CDC too.”

“Oh crap,” Jace said. “Now we’re all contaminated, thanks to you two. Couldn’t you guys have worked out your issues out at some other time?”

“First, I don't know what you're talking about,” Magnus said. “Second, I’m pissed off and I have a gun, so fucking move.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jace muttered, crouching down and grabbing Alec‘s ankles while Magnus hooked his arms beneath Alec‘s. “You’re a real cop and I’m a mall cop.”

Hauling well over six feet of dead weight out of a storage closet was awkward under the best of times, but especially trying when he was coordinating movements with someone he was desperately attempting to avoid eye contact with.

“You don’t have to be,” Magnus grunted, crab-walking Alec over the scaffolding and towards the lounge, a much less sexually charged place unless two-day old bagels did it for you.

“What else could I do? My whole family works here. This is all I know.”

“Join the FBI, dipshit," Magnus grunted. He would love Alec with all his heart if he were two hundred pounds or four hundred, but there was no getting around the fact that Alec's gorgeous ass weighed a metric fuckton, not a real unit of measurement as he'd been informed by Izzy. "Maybe the reason you feel like you don't belong here is because you don't. There's more to the world than this Institute, Jace. It doesn't make you any less of a Lightwood to work somewhere else."

“You think I could do that? Work for the FBI?”

“I think you could do anything you set your mind to,” Magnus said honestly. “Except convince Clary to go out with you.”

“We’re a couple of sad sacks, huh?” Jace asked, then brightened. They settled Alec onto the couch and Magnus eyed him critically. As someone who had seen many crime scenes, this was super sketchy at best. “But hey, at least you got your man.”

"Yeah," Magnus said, unconvinced.

The problem was always the fungus. Magnus didn’t want to be a bad decision made because of impending death.

He wanted --

He wanted Alec to feel about him the way he felt about Alec.

“Time to call in the CDC,” Jace said. “Hope the mackin’ was worth it.”

Magnus touched Alec’s face, the arched, quizzical brows, the mouth, too often pursed with disapproval, and something ached, deep and low and hollow inside of him. The same dumb part of him that always seemed to ask for too much from people.

He hoped it was worth it, too.

 


	6. if i tremble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hush now, daddy's talking," Magnus said serenely. 
> 
> "That is so upsetting," Alec said. "Why would you say that?"

 

Alec was taken to the hospital to recuperate under closer observation. Izzy assured everyone Alec would be fine, it was just an adverse reaction to the prophylactics they all took, which Magnus sort of remembered the doctor warning about while Magnus was busy adding him to his monthly list of mortal enemies. Magnus tended to believe revenge was best served cold, but he found he also enjoyed it piping hot and lukewarm.

Magnus spent the rest of the night and most of the next day holed up with Izzy in her office, slogging through the rest of their case notes.

He flipped through the hotel case. "I don't see Alec's notes here."

Izzy took the file from him and scanned the papers. "He must have forgotten to add them. I'll let him know if he gets back." Her face went pale. "When he gets back," she amended quickly.

Magnus reached across the desk and touched her hand. "He'll be fine."

"I know that," she said brusquely. But she flipped her hand over on the desk, captured his, and squeezed back.

A long day, a few restless naps, and a quick blood test later, and everyone at the Institute was declared lung fungus free and set loose to terrorize the world with their terrible decision making once again.

Clary and Jace stumbled out of her office. Clary looked hungover, dark smudges beneath her eyes.

Magnus chucked her beneath the chin. "Go home and get some rest, maybe call in sick for a few days. Take care of yourself."

She smiled at him gratefully. "Same to you," she said and Magnus inclined his head. Jace was standing in the atrium, waiting for her.

Magnus nodded in his direction. "Are you sure? He's kind of a dunce."

"Yeah, but he's my dunce." She shrugged. "He makes me feel better. I've learned two things from working here the past year. The first is that people suck. Deeply and totally. The second is that you have to take happiness where you can get it."

"Can't argue with that, Biscuit."

"Hey, Magnus? Not that I'm complaining, but what's with the nicknames?"

Magnus hesitated. "Someone once gave me a nickname a long time ago and ever since, I've always thought that if you had a nickname, that meant you were loved."

"What was your name?" Clary asked, peering up at him.

Magnus shook his head. "It doesn't matter. No one's called me that in years."

 

\---

 

Of course, Magnus forgot Alec's shoes, hadn't even realized he'd kicked them off before he arrived. A very confused janitor found them the next day along with a bunch of smashed suspiciously butt-shaped toilet paper rolls. He gave the shoes to Izzy, who told her best friend Clary, who told Jace, who told everyone else because he sucked and didn't understand the concept of a secret. He was going to make a real shitty FBI agent.

Magnus desperately hoped Jace would use him as a reference on his application so Magnus could tank the little fucker's career.

It was totally fine, it wasn't like he was in love with Alec or anything, Magnus thought, rubbing the back of his head, half expecting to feel his brain dribbling out. He stared down at his phone, the screen ominously dark. It had been three days of endless paperwork and meetings and trying to explain to Ragnor why he got trapped by the CDC and nearly started an epidemic. Just a little one.

He swallowed down a sob and patted his holster. He might mosey down to the firing range later. Shooting at things always made him feel better.  
Of course, Alec was busy recuperating, but the truth was, Magnus wasn't sure how much he remembered.

He clicked out of the FBI database, pulled up google, and started furiously searching the side effects of the medication they'd been given, anxiously looking for memory loss. Instead, he found a lot of gross websites and a recipe for moist melt-in-your-mouth meatloaf.

Magnus was tapping his pen so furiously against the edge of his desk that it exploded, sending dark blue ink everywhere. Magnus cursed and stood up. He tossed the pen in the wastebasket under his desk and headed to the bathroom to see if he could salvage his shirt. It was the last time he would try to be classy and fill out reports with a fountain pen.

In the bathroom, shirt sleeves rolled up, he looked down at the dark splotches staining his hands, his forearm, mentally sorting through puzzle pieces and trying to slot them into place.

He chewed his lip, thinking, as he wandered back to his desk. Just as he was pulling his chair up, his phone buzzed. Magnus practically leaped across the desk. "Bane."

"Hey," Alec said, "what are you doing?"

Magnus glanced up at his computer screen, mind blank. "Moist meatloaf," he blurted out. As soon as the words left his mouth, he slapped a hand to his face and sank down low in his chair.

"That's, uh, I'm not sure how to respond to that. Congratulations?" Alec said. "Can you come by the Institute later? I think I found something you might be interested in?"  
Magnus glanced at the clock on the wall next to his desk. "Yeah, I'll be there in 45."

 

\---

 

Magnus passed by Izzy's office and saw Alec and Izzy sitting together on the couch. Snippets of their conversation drifted out towards him, "You can't lead him on, you'll break his heart."

"I honestly have no clue what you're talking about," Izzy said, sounding exasperated. "Are you finally having a nervous breakdown? Jace bet me $50 it would be this year. I thought you'd hold out until New Years at least."

"Fine, be that way," Alec huffed.

Magnus hated to interrupt what sounded like an intense and eavesdrop-worthy conversation, but he had important things to do today.

He knocked on the door and cleared his throat.

"Magnus," Izzy said. "Didn't expect you. Did we have plans?"

"I called him about the report," Alec said.

"Also," Magnus interjected, "I was going to come here anyway. I was going to see if you wanted to check out the hotel with me again? I'm onto something big, I can feel it. Maybe we missed something the first time around."

"I don't miss things," Izzy said. Alec was sitting on the couch in her office, staring down at the floor. He looked tired but good, the top buttons of his shirt undone. "Besides, I'm busy."

His fingers weren't broken, Magnus noted sourly. Perfectly capable of picking up the phone earlier.

"What happened to partners for life," Magnus demanded.

"About that," Izzy said.

"Should I leave?" Alec asked.

"No, this concerns you too," Izzy told him and dammit, now Magnus was intrigued. "Because of the incident with the Coccidioidomycosis, it was brought to the board's attention that we didn't have an effective emergency protocol in place. Our mother decided to step down as Head of the Institute, and I've been asked to take over." Her face was flushed, eyes shining, and Magnus was happy for her, was possibly the only other person in the world that knew how much Izzy had wanted the job, but he couldn't stop his gaze from sliding to check on Alec. It was supposed to be his job.

Alec looked okay, but clearly, Magnus had never been able to read him in the first place.

"So, what does this mean for us?"

"It means that I can't go out in the field with you anymore. And it also means I have a boring board meeting in ten minutes," she said, checking her watch.

"So, that's it?" Magnus asked, "the Institute is done with me?" Christ, this was becoming a depressing pattern in his life.

"God, no," Izzy said, looking shocked. "No, I'm sending Alec into the field with you. He's a trained forensic pathologist, entymologist, palynologist."

"That's a lot of'ologists'," Magnus said.

Izzy ignored him. "He's probably more qualified than I am."

"Alec?" Magnus asked doubtfully.

"Yeah, unless you don't want me?" Alec finally spoke up, looking up at Magnus.

Magnus wanted to say no, would probably be better off taking Jace into the field with him and using his head as a battering ram. The problem was, he always wanted Alec, was embarrassingly unable to tell him no. "It'll be fine, I guess," he grumbled.

"On that weirdly ambivalent note," Izzy said, closing her laptop and sliding it off the desk. "I am late for my meeting." She leaned down and kissed Alec on the cheek. "Your first report to me better not suck, bro."

"I'm writing it in Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform," Alec promised. "Have fun with that."

"So," Magnus said a little awkwardly after Izzy left, "uh, I guess you're coming to the hotel with me?"

“You’re wearing a black suit,” Alec pointed out.

“I thought that was what all g-men wore.” If it came out a little more bitter than he meant it to, Magnus could be forgiven. He straightened his plain tie. It was black on black on black and though his bosses had given him a discreet thumbs up at his new attire, it made Magnus feel like it matched his soul -- dull, blunted, _utterly betrayed by love_.

“Never you,” Alec said. “You always wear -- your suits are always different. I liked seeing what you would wear every day.”

"Why, Alexander, I'm so pleased," Magnus said.

Instead of the usual scoffing and corrections, Alec bit his bottom lip. "I feel like we should we talk?”

“Isn’t that what we’re already doing?”

“No, about --” and here, he lowered his voice "--the other night. In the closet."

“I thought you didn’t remember?”

“Of course I remembered,” Alec said. “I don’t go around touching so many dicks that I can afford to forget one.”

"You didn't call," Magnus said, hoping it didn't sound as wounded as he felt.

"There was a lot going on with my mom stepping down and everything. I meant to, I just--didn't know what to say. I had to get everything in order here, talk to Izzy before..." he trailed off.

"What does Izzy have to do with this?"

"Nothing," Alec said, looking shifty. "She's just been so busy with the new job and all, I haven't had a chance to sit down and talk with her." He was slouched in the chair, shoulders loose and relaxed, hardly the picture of a man who'd just had his birthright stolen by his little sister.

“You turned the job down," Magnus concluded.

“I--yes,” Alec admitted, “but she’ll be better at it than I would, already is. Look at the way she handled the situation with the lockdown. I’m not saying I won’t want to run the Institute eventually when she's moved on, but right now, I have other things I want more.”

"And what do you want?"

He paused. "I'm still trying to figure that out."

Magnus sighed. God save him from sexually-repressed nerds. "Get your forensic kit and meet me at my car in fifteen."

 

\---

 

Remembering Alec's predilection for the trashiest and greasiest food available at 3 am, Magnus jogged across the street to the coffee shop and ordered himself a black coffee and a triple, venti, half sweet, non-fat Caramel Macchiato to go.

He met Alec at his car with the coffee.

"Yes, I know you take your coffee black," Magnus said by way of explanation, "but just try this." He handed Alec the cup and watched Alec take an experimental sip.

"Ugh, it's really sweet," Alec said, making a face at his cup. But Magnus noticed he kept sipping it as he slid into the passenger side and tossed his kit into the back seat.

"When we get there, you have to hang back. Let me take the lead," Magnus said, flipping on his sirens and pulling into traffic.

"You can't use your sirens to cut people off."

"Pretty sure I just did," Magnus said, blithely swerving through the afternoon congestion.

"By the way, I'm not helpless. I'm taller than you."

Magnus shot Alec a pitying look. "It's not the size of the gun, but the bullets in the chamber. Besides, you didn't have any complaints about my gun the other night."

Alec choked on his coffee. Magnus wordlessly leaned over, popped open the gloev compartment, and handed Alec a napkin.

"Now," Magnus continued conversationally, "you're going to be tempted to play the hero, but I have some advice: don't."

"Wait--"

"Hush now, daddy's talking," Magnus said serenely.

"That is so upsetting," Alec said. "Why would you say that?"

"I'm going to give you instructions and you're going to want to ignore them, also: don't do that. Got it?"

"Got it," Alec muttered, draining the last of his coffee loudly. He looked down at the empty cup as if confused where it all went, then tossed it in the backseat.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Magnus asked.

"What?" Alec asked, just as Magnus was parking, cutting off a back alley. Alec raised a questioning eyebrow.

"Don't want him to see us coming."

"Who?"

"The manager with the long sleeves."

Alec looked even more confused. "Is that a crime now? You could arrest me for half of my sweaters."

"It is when I'm pretty sure he's covering up a matching tattoo in the same spot our fleeing suspect had one. Sure as shit seems like a hell of a coincidence."

"That's pretty fimsy, but it's kind of what I called you about earlier," Alec said. "I was looking over the pathology report and there were some irregular cuts. Not enough to draw any conclusions, mind--"

Magnus' hands tightened on the steering wheel. "What does that mean, why didn't Izzy see it earlier?"

"She did, she noted the multiple striation patterns," Alec said. "I was reading over her report and adding my own notes in. But we're just scientists, we don't conjecture and we don't make intuitive leaps. We deal with facts. That's all."

"But if you were to--"

"We don't," Alec said firmly.

"But if you did," Magnus said, meeting his eyes. _Come on_ , he thought. He knew Alec had it in him, and he hadn't been wrong about a Lightwood so far.

"I would say there were two killers," Alec said finally, "probably one older and one younger, kind of a fucked up apprenticeship, if you will."

Magnus exhaled, then punched the steering wheel. "I fucking knew it." He scraped a hand through his hair. "Okay, okay. You're going to stay by the car and I'm going in to question him. I'll be out in a few."

Alec nodded unhappily and Magnus left the keys in the ignition as he headed inside through the back entrance, bypassing security with his badge. The lobby wasn't quite as nice as he remembered, but wasn't that the way with all beautiful things? They faded in your memory, became shining beacons of a singular moment that you couldn't ever get back, like an old photograph, faded and bent at the edges. He desperately hoped Alec would never be that to him.

A hand landed on his shoulder and Magnus yelped. He swung around and saw Alec standing sheepishly behind him. "Goddamnit," Magnus swore. "Do you ever listen to anything I say, you insufferable brat?"

"I can't let you go alone," Alec insisted. "What if it gets dangerous?"

"What, you're going to scream really loudly?"

"I might," Alec said mulishly. "I just _might_."

"Okay," Magnus said, sighing. It wasn't like he couldn't handle any situation alone, but he didn't particularly want to. He'd gotten used to having backup. "Stay back and let me do the talking."

Alec agreed and followed Magnus past the lobby, through a drinking lounge. "Ooh," Alec said, staring wide-eyed at large potted trees, "do you think those are real?"

"I don't fucking know," Magnus said, exasperated, and approached the front desk. He slapped his badge against the counter and asked for the manager.

A familiar figure appeared out of the back office. "Mr. Bane."

"Special Agent," Magnus corrected. "Can we have a word in private?"

"We're always happy to help our friends at the FBI," the manager said expansively. Now that Magnus was studying him with a closer eye, there was a coldness about him. All the hairs stood up on the back of Magnus' neck. He always knew when someone was faking emotion, as much as sometimes he wished he didn't.

They made their way to the abandoned lounge, over by Alec's blasted trees, where Alec stood two paces behind him, arms crossed over his chest. He supposed Alec was trying to look tough. Magnus rolled his eyes and turned back to the manager, who was tugging his sleeves down.

"Tattoo?" Magnus said casually. He couldn't recall exactly, but he had the same sense of deja vu he'd had in the FBI bathroom while scrubbing at his hands. Magnus must have glimpsed it at some point and filed it to the back of his mind as unimportant.

The manager gave him a sharp look but didn't answer.

"I finally got the security tapes," Magnus said. "They were edited, but I'm sure you already knew that. But did you know, we can figure out where the tapes were edited? Computers leave a signature of sorts and I think it's just a matter of time before we have solid proof." Magnus leaned close, whispered in his ear, "I know it was you, asshole. Now roll up your goddamn sleeve."

When a suspect decided to flee, they always got a similar look. Their eyes widened as they realized they'd been caught, they mentally weighed being arrested versus fleeing, thought about escape routes. But Magnus was only half-paying attention, too busy watching Alec touching the tree leaves and muttering, "Aw, nuts, " in a disappointed voice.

That's why it took him a disastrous thirty seconds to realize the manager was turning on his heel and fleeing towards the stairwell.

Magnus took off after him, wondering why every single goddamn time he stepped foot in a Four Seasons he was chasing after a suspect. He yelled over his shoulder, "Go wait by the car, Alec. Listen to me this time."

He didn't have time to make sure Alec followed his directions because he was already sprinting across the marble floor and into the door, shoulder first, tossing it open with as much force as possible. The manager was three landings ahead of him, but he wasn't as young as his apprentice, and Magnus was gaining.

He mentally dug himself for another long-ass haul up the endless flights of stairs when the manager took him by surprise and darted through a side door. Magnus followed him through, shirt already clinging unpleasantly to his back.

They made their way down long corridors, through a shorter hall, Magnus nearly close enough to grab his irritatingly well-tailored jacket. He nearly ran into a housekeeping cart parked outside a room as the manager made a sharp turn and took off through a non-descript door. Christ, this hotel was beige: beige walls, beige carpet, beige marble. Apparently, people only had room for wealth or style and they'd chosen money every single damn time.

Magnus skidded past the door and cursed, turning, and following him down another stairwell. He mentally tried to recall the floor plan of the hotel. If he was right, they'd looped around the building and the manager was heading toward that back, right at the exit into the alley where Magnus had parked.

Where Alec was waiting. Where Magnus had told Alec to wait.

The manager was too far ahead, Magnus thought. He'd never make it in time.

Magnus' heart thundered in his chest as he ran through the last door, coming to an abrupt halt when he saw the suspect lying motionless on the ground, Alec crumpled on the pavement ten feet away.

Magnus ran over and dropped to his knees in the alley, heedless of the gravel biting into them, the filth. His suit would be ruined, but he didn't care. If something happened to Alec, Magnus didn't think he'd be able to care about anything else ever again.

"Alec, Alec, _Christ_!" He tucked two fingers beneath Alec's jaw to check his pulse and nearly sagged in relief when he felt it beating steadily.

Alec groaned and opened his eyes. "Magnus?"

"Alexander!" Magnus gasped and pulled him close, held him as tightly to his chest as he could.

Alec muttered against him, then slapped desperately against his chest. Magnus loosened his grip as Alec took a gasping breath. "Couldn't breathe," he said.

"Sorry," Magnus said, but he wasn't really, and helped Alec sit up before demanding, "What the hell happened?"

 "Uh, the suspect came running out the side door. And I told him to stop and he didn't. Probably because he's a criminal."

"Okay?"

"So, I hit him."

"You can't just hit suspects!"

"I panicked, okay?" Alec said, then added sheepishly, "Then I might've tripped."

"Might have?"

"Definitely did," Alec amended.

Magnus got to his feet and held out a hand for Alec, who still looked a little unsteady on his. He checked on the suspect, who seemed about as fine as somebody who was cold-cocked by 6 ft 3 of frightened but determined dork could be.

Magnus called it in, and within twenty minutes, the street was littered with cop cars, EMS, even the goddamn fire department, lights flashing everywhere like the absolute worst, grimmest carnival to ever come to town.

Magnus collared the manager, who was awake and kind of embarrassed, and sent him to the FBI in police custody.

When Magnus found Alec, he was sitting on the back of the ambulance, the doors hanging open, his long legs swinging against the bumper. He had a thin silver space blanket thrown over his shoulders that crackled loudly with every movement. He looked like a giant miserable baked potato.

Their eyes met across the alley, and Alec waved, then seemed to remember his huge tinfoil blanket and looked sheepish as he grinned lopsidedly at Magnus, the corners of his eyes crinkling.

Magnus felt something inside himself, something he'd thought shriveled up and died a long time ago, quiver and shake alive as if waking up from a long hibernation.

"EMTs said I'm fine," Alec grumbled as Magnus approached, "after they finished laughing."

Magnus felt the corners of his mouth tug up. "Don't let them tell you otherwise, you were very brave."

"I was, wasn't I?" Alec said, looking incrementally more cheerful. Then his face fell. "Hey, Magnus, can I ask you a favor?"

"Yeah?" _Anything_ , Magnus thought.

"Please don't tell Izzy about this," Alec begged.

 

\---

 

"And that's how we became partners," Magnus says.

The sun's going down and it's raining, nothing more than a drizzle, but enough to make the sky go hazy and gray.

Simon discreetly checks his clock on the wall behind his desk. "Wow, it only took six hours to get here."

"Hey, you're evaluating my partnership with Alec. Do you want to hear the rest or not?"

 

\---

 

Magnus got the manager's confession quickly. But he had no idea where his partner was or how they'd even met or why the matching tats. Maybe they met on an Ariana Grande fan forum for all he knew. It was still a win, he supposed, but a hollow one. Magnus finished up his paperwork and left.

On his way home, he swung by the Institute. Everyone had gone home, of course, but the light in Izzy's office was still on. Magnus knocked against the frame, standing in the open doorway before barging in and throwing himself on her couch.

"Come on in," Izzy said.

"How'd the meeting go?"

"Beauracratic bullshit, the usual," Izzy said with a sigh. "It'll get better. I hope."

Magnus stared down at his black socks angrily. 

"What's wrong with you?" Izzy asked. "Alec said your first case together went okay, even though I heard he punched the suspect."

"I am filled with ennui," Magnus moaned, stretching out and folding his hands together behind his head.

“You’re full of something alright,” Izzy said, not looking up from her laptop. "What’s with the black ensemble? You’re freaking me out.”

Despite her proclamation, she seemed deeply unconcerned as she glanced between her computer and notebook, occasionally stopping to make small notations in the margins.

"What do you think?" Magnus moaned.

She looked a little uncomfortable. “Look, if you’re waiting for my brother to say something, you might be waiting a long time. He once spent two hours at a pharmacy trying to decide between sparkling white and tartar control toothpaste.”

“Which one did he pick?” Magnus asked.

“Not the point,” Izzy said. “Are you in love with my brother?”

“Let’s not get carried away now.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” Izzy said, rubbing her temples. “Just talk to him. He's still in his lab.”

“I’m not sure--”

“Talk to him.”

“But--”

"Talk. To. Him.”

“Oh all right,” Magnus huffed, heaving himself up from the couch.

 

\---

 

Magnus knocked on the door before opening it. "Jace have company tonight?"

"Ah, Clary," Alec said, back turned. "She could better and he could do worse, but they seem happy enough."

"You did well out there today. Since Izzy's promotion, I guess you'll be going out to the field with me?"

"Looks like," Alec said. He was busy cutting back some plants in an overly complicated looking hydroponic system he had set up covering the far wall. There was a particular kind of beauty to Alec’s lab, Magnus thought, if you looked at it in the right way. It was all lush green flora growing in mini hothouses, large blown-up pictures of mold and flowers in every color of the rainbow. Beauty in the unexpected, that was his Alexander.

"I know it's going to be a hardship, darling, seeing how much you hate me."

“I never hated you,” Alec said, turning quickly. He seemed stunned.

"No?" Magnus said, utterly refusing to be hopeful.

"Magnus, I've always been crazy about you. Come in," Alec said, gesturing at him. "And get the lights, will you?"

Magnus felt along the edge of the wall and flipped the lights off one by one. To his great surprise, the wall of plants glowed.

"Better than those hacks at MIT did last year," Alec said cheerfully. He touched the edge of a glowing green leaf. "I'm sorry you thought I hated you. I've been accused of being unfriendly before."

" _No_ ," Magnus said, pretending to be scandalized. "But more importantly, back to the part where you said you were crazy about me."

"Mmmhmm," Alec said. "You were so friendly with Izzy, so affectionate, I thought you were in love with her."

Magnus was flabbergasted. In his lifetime, he could only think of a couple times he had been so unpleasantly surprised: when neon faux fur came into fashion and the first time he heard the Macarena on the radio. "I've told you a thousand times how I feel about you."

“Yeah, I mean, you've invited me out for dinner, made it apparent you'd be up for a one night stand. I guess I figured you thought if you couldn't have her, I was better than nothing,” Alec said like it was a fact. It was the same voice he used to tell Magnus that not all GMOs were bad and that kicking a vending machine because it ate his money wasn't a productive use of Magnus' time or skill set. It killed Magnus a little, how Alec could say and think these unkind things about himself without even flinching.

“My God, you’re stupid,” Magnus breathed. "She would never have me in a million years."

"I know that," Alec said a little sharply. "Do you think I would do that to my sister?" He grabbed some safety goggles from a drawer. “It’s okay. I’m used to being everyone’s second choice.”

"You would never be a consolation prize. I would never do that to you or to anyone else," Magnus insisted. "There's never been anything romantic between me and Izzy."

"Yeah, that's what she told me," Alec said, "before she punched me in a manner that I felt was a touch stronger than strictly necessary."

"If that's what you thought," Magnus said, "then why did you kiss me back?"

"I don't know? I guess I just wanted to know what it felt like -- to --" he fumbled his words. "I just wanted to pretend. For a moment, for a night."

"Who would do that to themselves?" Magnus asked, feeling sick.

Alec slipped the goggles on, grabbed a pipette and picked up a beaker of clear liquid. "Did you know why my mom stepped down as Head of the Institute? She took the blame for us not having a safety protocol in place. We do have one, but I ignored it. We all have, at one time or another here. We've been lazy about following it, though."

Maryse may not even crack the top one million of Magnus' favorite people, not after he had witnessed the damage she'd unwittingly done to her children by unreasonably high expectations, by teaching them that the Institute and its standing mattered far more than their individual desires, but she had protected them when it mattered. It reminded Magnus that people weren't simple or one-dimensional. She might be the villain in his particular story, but she would never be to Alec, who loved her too much.

"Sometimes I saw what Izzy and you had and thought, I want that." He looked up at Magnus through the thick plastic goggles. His eyes looked enormous and thoughtful. "Do you think we could have that?"

"Darling, we could have anything we want."

"Today, I felt good about myself for the first time in a long time. I think we have a chance to do some real good in the world."

Like everything at some point or another, the conversation was quickly spiraling out of his control. Magnus looked back at the plants, but the light was already fading.

"The problem with these plants is, I can't get them to glow for more than 20 minutes or so," Alec said, following Magnus' gaze. "I want them to be bright, I want them to be tall, but I can't seem to work it out. I think I want too much, and I have to give something up."

"Don't say it," Magnus said. His voice cracked.

"I do think we could be meaningful and great. And I want that -- to live a meaningful life, to protect people -- but I'm not sure I could do that if we were in a relationship. There's a reason the FBI has rules against it."

Magnus saw exactly where this conversation was headed. It was perfectly logical and Magnus found that though he wanted to argue, he couldn't. Alec wasn't wrong. It all made a horrible kind of sense and Magnus totally got it, the fulfillment of doing good in the world, the sheer need to protect. In another life, Alec might have made a good cop.

And Alec was right, being romantically involved would possibly fuck up their new partnership.

Izzy had been his partner because of the adventure, the excitement, and Magnus understood that, had counted on it even. He would be lying if he said that wasn't part of the allure of his job, too. But that wasn't the only reason. He and Alec had finally found the common ground he had been desperately searching for since they'd met and now that they had it, Magnus found he wasn't happy about it at all.

He hated it, but he could still respect it.

"And did you realize this before or after you fell on your ass?" Magnus asked, trying to lighten the mood.

Alec flushed. "A few seconds before," he admitted.

There was really nothing else to say. Magnus nodded and turned to leave.

But still, the horrible part of his brain that was unable to let things go made him turn around at the last minute and ask, “Hey, Alec? If I wasn’t an FBI agent and you weren’t” -- adorably grouchy, a tad unpleasant, Magnus’ mind supplied, then immediately discarded -- “well, _you_ , could we have made a real go of it?”

Magnus found himself mentally circling back and wondering if there was a time where he could have made a slightly different choice and changed this outcome? An alternate dimension where Magnus was maybe honest about his fears upfront, if they had talked the whole night instead of sneaking off to a storage closet?

If, if, if.

Would Alec be his now? Would they be leaving together, going home to their shitty apartment filled with his tacky tchotchkes and Alec’s $.99 microwave pizzas where they’d watch horrible movies curled up together on the couch, instead of each going home alone?

“Magnus, I don't know what you want me to say,” Alec said, looking lost.

“You don’t have to answer that,” Magnus said, rubbing his eyes. He was so tired. “I don’t even know why I asked.”

“I don’t know,” Alec answered, finally. “Maybe, yes. I think yes. Does it really matter?”

“No, I suppose not.” He rapped the door twice with his rings. "I'll talk to you tomorrow?"

Maybe he wouldn't get Alec in exactly the way he wanted, but he would get Alec in some capacity. And that had to be good enough. Besides, no one ever got everything they wanted. What made him think he could be different?

Magnus forced himself to smile, even though he doubted it looked like anything but a queasy grimace. Maybe tomorrow, or next week, he'd be able to smile and really mean it, but faking it was good enough for now. Fake it til you make it and all that, Magnus thought, touching his tie clip.

"Tomorrow," Alec replied.

"Good night, Bones," Magnus said softly.

"Bones?"

Magnus shrugged. "Yeah, you're my new bone guy. You stand around and stare at bones."

"I honestly hate that nickname," Alec informed him solemnly. "And you didn't even make a dirty joke."

"Guess we can all change," Magnus said and headed home alone.

 

 

 


	7. horrible, glorious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story. -- Orson Welles

 

Magnus glances out the window. Looks like the rain's going to let up soon.

"Is that it?" Simon asks, head tilted curiously. "It can't end there, not on that note. It's too sad."

"To paraphrase Orwell badly, everything can have a happy or a sad ending. It just depends on where you end the story." Magnus stands up, crosses the tiny office and leans against the window, the glass smooth and cool against his back. "And the two of us? Our story's not done yet."

 

\---

 

After some growing pains, Alec and Magnus worked pretty well together, hitting an impressive closure rate, except for one glaring issue.

It was a crisp, cold Saturday when Alec showed up on the FBI qualification course. "I'm here for my test, Range Master." The course was set up in part of what looked like a concrete bunker, complete with moving cutouts of assailants and civilians, flashing lights, alarms, the manufactured sound of a chopper overhead. It was designed to test agents under incredible amounts of pressure.

Agents, and one big squint.

Magnus turned around, clipboard in hand. He popped his earpiece in place, his borrowed t-shirt a little too snug around the shoulders to be stylish, but he didn't think Alec would mind.

"You," Alec hissed.

"I cashed in a favor with a buddy, so now I'm running this test."

"You can't do this," Alec spluttered.

"You keep saying that, and yet, here I am," Magnus said, grinning widely. "You're going to have my back out in the field? You once shot someone in the _ass_."

"It was an _accident_!"

"Like that's supposed to make me feel better?" Magnus said, craning his neck to look at his own backside.

"Magnus, you know I've been practicing."

Alec's eyes were wide, pleading, and he was so heartbreakingly beautiful that Magnus was tempted, but not nearly enough to certify for him for a gun and call it a day. Thank God he still had some sense of self-preservation left.

Magnus knew Alec had been practicing, had been there from the beginning, body pressed close, arms wrapped around Alec and whispering, "Jesus, keep both eyes open, Bones," as Alec took aim and squeezed off a round.

"It was just a BB gun, and I told my dad I was sorry. "

Magnus tapped his clipboard. "I happen to love myself and am particularly attached to my ass being lead-free."

"Love has nothing to do with it," Alec mumbled. "I loved him too."

Magnus didn't have any response for that, so he started the test, and the lights went down.

 

  
\---

 

The next day, Magnus stopped by the Institute. "So, I heard he shot you, too," Izzy said first thing when she saw him.

"Merely grazed my arm," Magnus said, giving it a little pat and wincing, "and it was an accident." Magnus' arm still throbbed and burned where the bullet creased it, but Alec had looked so apologetic.

"And yet you still you certified him."

"He shot the moving target and it ricocheted off the metal just as the target was flipping around," Magnus explained. "Could have happened to anyone. He's still a great shot, better than half the agents I work with."

"You poor sad fool," Izzy said, shaking her head. "Don't go anywhere. The CDC has cleared the body from the safe and they're sending it over in an hour along with the rest of the contents."

Shortly after, the clothes, suitcase, and other evidence came first, where techs carefully laid out on a backlit table in a clean room, tucked off to the side of the Institute.

Alec made a frustrated noise. "They removed all the particulates when they cleaned the evidence."

"Looks like we're going to have to do this the old-fashioned way," Magnus said smugly. He appreciated the help of Institute technology, but sometimes he thought Alec and Izzy forgot that good old fashioned police work was the basic backbone of an investigation. Like, sure, they could tell where someone lived and died from analyzing earwax accumulation, but it didn't take a genius or an electronic spectrometer to see the gaping hole in someone's head and the pants around the ankles. Jealous wife, cheating husband. Magnus privately thought the bastards probably had it coming.

"Looks like," Alec agreed grimly. He looked tired, like he hadn't been sleeping well, normally neatly combed hair a mess, tie hanging sad and crumpled down to where it kissed his belt buckle. He slipped on a pair of nitrile gloves and picked up a thick sheaf of folded papers; letters, Magnus realized, held together by a faded piece of ribbon, which for whatever reason, made him a little sad.

"How's your arm?" Alec asked, flipping through the letters.

"Can barely feel it," Magnus lied. His arm hurt like a _motherfucker_.

Alec looked at him askance but went back to examining the evidence, letters already set aside.

"Can I join in?" Izzy said, buttoning her dark blue lab coat and pulling on a pair of gloves as she came in.

"You don't have a meeting today?" Alec asked.

"Yes, but I'm skipping them," Izzy said shortly. She shot Alec a meaningful look. "Just let me have this. I need something simple today."

Magnus wasn't sure when a homicide became simple, but he wasn't about to turn down the extra help. The only thing better than one brilliant scientist was two.

She came up behind Alec and peered down at a neatly folded stack of shirts, pants. The victim was traveling and these small meager belongings were either all they had or all they'd been able to take.

"Male," Izzy said, carefully handling one of the shirts. "Mended shortly before death. Neat work, but it was an old shirt."

"He was poor?" Magnus asked.

"I don't think so," Alec said. "Suitcase is nice, shoes worn but expensive. More like frugal." He began putting things on small stainless steels trays where he'd take a look at them later and see if he could pull evidence.

Jace came to the door. "Body's here."

They went out to the forensic platform just as the techs were laying the body out on the exam table. Jace used his security badge to swipe them through.

Izzy changed her gloves and crouched down to see the bones at eye-level. “He was small in stature, back curved from severe untreated scoliosis," Izzy said, studying the skeleton. "Late thirties."

"Small divots in the skull," Alec pointed out from the head of the examing table. "Leftover from childhood trauma. Speaking of--he wore a toupee. It was with the evidence brought in earlier. Synthetic material, it hasn't degraded at all."

"That couldn't have looked good," Clary said, stepping up onto the platform, notebook tucked under her arm. She laid it on a nearby table next to the trays where Magnus was looking over the evidence, eyes drawn back to the stack of letters. The edges were curled and fuzzy-soft like they'd been unfolded and refolded a thousand times. Whoever these were from, they'd meant a lot to the victim.

He grabbed a pair of gloves, then picked them up, unfolded the first one. Love letters from someone named "S". It felt like an intrusion to read these letters obviously not meant for him. Whoever this S was, the naked longing was evident.

What would it be like, Magnus wondered, to want someone so much and have them want you in return?

They didn't get to spend much time together, that much was clear. It was something illicit. He refolded the top letter and shuffled it to the back. To his surprise, two envelopes slipped out from behind it, and Magnus caught them before they hit the ground.

"But somebody still loved him anyway," Magnus murmured, turning the envelopes over in his hand.

“How do you know that?” Alec asked sharply, looking up from the skeleton. "About the love?"

“Because I’ve got eyes?” Magnus said, holding two plane tickets up that he'd pulled out of the envelopes. “His name was Lionel. Two one-way tickets to Paris. Letters to his lady? He was running away with someone.”

"That seems impulsive," Alec said with a small frown.

"He was anything but," Izzy said. "Look at the toupee. The clothes in his suitcase were all patched and mended, everything folded carefully." She moved down to the foot of the table. "He worked on his feet. He suffered from pinched nerves. He had to have been in pain every day."

“He should have gotten a desk job," Clary remarked.

Alec shook his head. “His suitcase was expensive, but he was mending shirts. I think his job paid well, and he endured it because he was saving up for his life in a new country.”

"That sounds like conjecture," Magnus warned lightly.

Alec looked back at him with a faint grin. "An intuitive leap, I think you call it."

"May I?" Clary asked, tapping Magnus' arm to catch his attention. He handed the letters to her and watched as she carefully shuffled through them as if handling precious artifacts. Alec and Izzy dealt with the physical evidence, but what he liked about Clary was that she understood that emotions were just as important.

Magnus hazarded another glance at Alec, who was bent over and studying the head trauma. "Bullet wound, small caliber, close range. From the trajectory, he would have died instantly."

Magnus was relieved to hear it.

Most crimes were crimes of passion. But not this one, Magnus didn't think. There was a small suitcase, a body stuffed in a large safe, two plane tickets to take him away from whatever he couldn‘t endure here. No cash anywhere to be found. This seemed like a robbery, plain and simple. He just wanted to know _why_.

“They’re love letters, all right. But I don’t think to a woman,” Clary said, holding them up.

"How the hell do you know that?" Magnus asked, taken aback.

“There's only one letter from Lionel to S -- I don't think he had a chance to send it yet. The language is all wrong. To my beloved, and he talks about his lover's shoulders, his thighs, his hips, his hands, his beautiful eyes. Those are strange things to focus on when talking about a lady, no? I can't explain it. It's just a feeling."

Magnus whistled. "No wonder they were looking to get out of town and start over."

She put down the letters, removed her gloves, went to the computer, and started typing. "So we have his name from the plane tickets. It looks like he worked in the World Bank downtown. He was in his late thirties when he died, but the letters go back at least ten years, so we need to find someone close to his age within about maybe five years either way? This shouldn't be too hard, it wasn't a big bank. And the syntax is really simple, I don't believe this guy had an education beyond the 10th grade, so probably not a fellow banker."

“So, he saved up for ten years to run away with someone and then got shot on the way to the airport?” Jace asked from his security checkpoint at the base of the platform.

“Seems like it,” Izzy said, lips pressed together, expression grim.

Clary continued typing, fingers flying across the keyboard. "Oh," she said, making a small sound and going still.

"Did you find something, Clary?" Magnus asked. He peered over her shoulder and saw a black and white photo of a smiling young man.

"He was a janitor that worked in the building. His name was Stephen." Her hand reached up and trailed across the screen. "He did have beautiful eyes."

"Where is he now?" Magnus asked, his stomach clenching in fear. He had to find Stephen. It was suddenly of the utmost importance that he let him know that he hadn't been abandoned, that Lionel was planning to run away with him.

"1300 Bladensburg Road."

"Where is that?" Magnus pulled out his phone to plug in the address.

"It's a cemetery," Clary answered. "He passed away a few years ago."

Everyone had gone silent.

"I don't get it?" Alec spoke up. "Why risk all that -- for what? Love? They could have kept doing what they were doing.”

"Sometimes you don't have a choice," Izzy said, staring at him. “Sometimes you just have to be with someone, damn all the rules.”

"That doesn't make sense," Alec insisted, shaking his head. "It's not logical at all."

Izzy laughed. It would have been mocking, if not for the underlying fondness. She'd pulled off her gloves and was running her fingers through the back of his dark hair. "Love rarely is."

"Hey, guys?" Clary called out from the computer. "He had a safety deposit box opened by a Gil Adkins the day after Lionel didn't show up for work."

"I've never met a Gil that wasn't an asshole," Jace said darkly.

"How many Gils have you know? Really? A specific number," Clary asked him.

"You'd be shocked," Jace replied.

"Where is Gil now?" Magnus interrupted. "Can you find out?"

Clary clicked around a little more. "Gil was killed 20 years after Lionel died." She scanned the news article. "It doesn't say specifically, but reading the lines, it sounds like a bar fight."

"Sayonara, asshole," Jace said. "Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy."

"So, I guess that‘s that,” Izzy said, sounding unusually subdued. “Case closed. This one was pretty easy, I guess.”

Alec told her, "I'll grab one of the techs to put the body in storage until we can find his nearest living relative. It may take a while."

"Can I have a moment with him?" Magnus asked. "Before they take him away?"

Lionel would go into Limbo for storage, the place where they put unknown or unclaimed bodies. Magnus had been down there twice and wasn't eager to repeat the experience. It was a long room with seemingly endless aisles, drawers full of lost souls.

Personally, Magnus had never put much stock in bones. They looked like refuse, nonsense. People like Izzy and Alec could look at them and see a whole person, see how they lived and died. To Magnus, they were as much of a person as a handful of torn pages were a book.

But here was a man who had stared at the same sun as Magnus, had breathed the same air, who had counted on a tomorrow, and let logic temper his dreams. A man who had lived his entire life without ever being truly free.

He'd loved, waited too long, and ended up with nothing at all.

Magnus reached out a gloved hand and touched the skeletal hand. "Goodbye, old friend. I'm sorry we failed you. I hope you saw your love again."

 

\---

 

Magnus left the Institute and started aimlessly walking.

It was raining, dark; the night was a vise clamped around his heart. He made it two blocks before he saw a diner, a little small, kind of decrepit. It was one of the few holdovers from the 50's, all pitted chrome and ugly brick. Against all odds, it had survived.

The season was sliding into Spring, but it was still really shitting cold, and possibly Magnus had not thought this walkthrough. With a sigh, Magnus went in.

 

\---

 

When he got back to the Institute, everyone had gone home, but the light in Izzy's office was shining like a beacon.

Izzy was at her desk, head bent low over her laptop, wearing a sheath dress, hair pinned neatly back. She was already dressing more like her mother.

"Everything okay?" Magnus asked.

She raised her head and took in his soggy appearance. "What the hell happened to you?"

"Self-reflection, I suppose."

"That doesn't sound like you."

Magnus set down his drink carrier, shucked off his coat and left it at the door, made his way to her desk, and set his carryout bags on the corner. Her laptop was off, screen dark. He raised an eyebrow.

"I had to fire someone today," Izzy said. "I just keep reliving over and over, thinking about how I could have handled it better. He had a family. He was a friend."

"I'm sorry."

She shook her head. "He left me no choice. He'd been given multiple warnings. He was mishandling artifacts, could have cost this Institution its reputation. How did mom do this kind of stuff? She's always been so strong."

"How many warnings?"

"Countless, honestly. Spanning years."

"Did it ever occur to you that your mom gave him so many warnings because she was reluctant to fire him, too?" Magnus said, "There's more than one type of strength. You did what you had to do. And feeling bad about doing something necessary but terrible? That's _okay_. Don't let this job change you."

She gave him a watery smile and discreetly wiped under her eyes. He pretended not to notice, turning to study one of her deeply boring books.

"Is one of those for me, or have you finally given up?" she asked, going through the bags.

"Never. Actually, two of them are yours, you eat more than any other woman I've met," Magnus answered. "One is mine and the other is--well."

"Yeah," she said. "He likes ketchup and mustard on his, like a total freak."

Magnus pushed the bags across her desk and she grinned down at them. "I'm going to go home and enjoy this with a big-ass glass of wine."

"That sounds like a plan," he said.

Izzy took ger bags, gathered her briefcase and coat. She got nearly all the way to the door before she turned and said, "Did I ever tell you the end to the toothpaste story?"

"The one where Alec spent the entire day at the pharmacy trying to pick one out?"

"Yeah, that one."

"I didn't know there was more to the scintillating tale of the dental accouterments," Magnus said. "Pray tell, which one did he pick?"

“Oh, Alec? None of them. He stomped all the way home and decided to make his own.”

“Really?”

“Terrible cook, decent-to-middling chemist. Now everyone here uses it. It's great. Tartar control, whitening, and minty fresh. Seems silly that you have choose just one, right? Why do we always force ourselves to choose between necessary things?"

Magnus really couldn't say, but he'd been doing it all of his life.

"That’s kind of his thing, you know? If he doesn’t like the options he’s given, he forges his own path.”

“I am deeply surprised.”

“I know it seems like he's just standing still, but he's listening and thinking and analyzing. We're scientists, Magnus. We don't jump to conclusions or make choices quickly."

"I've noticed," Magnus said dryly.

"I'm just saying, I'm not sure you should count him out yet. He can be a pretty surprising guy.”

 

\---

 

Magnus climbed the stairs to the second landing like it was a mountain. His hair still dripped in his face and his shoes were full of water. He was cold, both inside and out.

Maybe no one did get everything they wanted, but that didn't mean that Magnus shouldn't try. After all, he owed it to himself.

And if it didn't work out? That was okay, too. Magnus could live with that, but he couldn't live in limbo any longer. If Alec didn't want him, if he truly only wanted a partnership, then Magnus had to let Alec go. Magnus deserved better than to spend his life waiting for someone to claim him. He'd already been waiting for thirty-five years.

Alec was in the break area, eating a salad. There was a stain on his tie, his shirt was wrinkled. Alec liked obnoxiously sweet drinks and he spent hours picking out toothpaste; he constantly struggled between what he wanted and what he thought he _should_ want.

For maybe the first time since Magnus had met him, he felt like he was really seeing Alec as he was, not the lust-addled fever dream of his late night fantasies.

Magnus finally understood Alec, the whole messy, complex truth of him, and he liked everything he saw.

Alec looked tired and unhappy, so used to his routine, he couldn't even see when there were other options available to him.

 _Oh my darling_ , Magnus thought, _you don't even see the cage you've built for yourself._

He set the drinks and burgers down on the table and Alec looked up. "Hey," he said. "I was going to call you."

"Then it's a good thing I found you."

The lights on the forensic platform had been shut down and up here, it was just him and Alec, a single bulb illuminating the table, darkness swallowing the edges of the Institute. "It's a good thing," Alec murmured.

Magnus pulled out the seat next to him and slid into the chair, shoved his wet hair back out of his face. Alec didn't comment on Magnus' bedraggled appearance. He had to have known it was raining outside and wordlessly accepted Magnus' general penchant for overdramatics.

“What are we doing?” Magnus asked.

"Eating, I thought," Alec said. "What's in the bags?"

"The best bacon burgers you'll ever eat."

Alec eagerly grabbed the top bag, salad already long forgotten. He unwrapped a burger and took a big bite, eyes fluttering shut as he chewed. It was worth the trip just to see this, Magnus thought.

"I probably shouldn't be eating this," Alec said between alarmingly large bites. "I once wrote a paper on the overwhelming dangers of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol."

"Sounds like a real page-turner, but why don't you live a little," Magnus said, unwrapping his own burger. But he didn't take a bite, just watched Alec polish his off terrifyingly fast.

Alec wiped his mouth when he was done and gave his empty wrapper a mournful look before turning to Magnus. "I know you didn't come here just to feed me."

Magnus hesitated.

If he wasn't honest now, then there was no point to anything at all. He might as well just pack it up and be a dead sexy but lonely bachelor forever. As much as he was wanted tempted to just let it go, to sit down and eat and bask in the easy camaraderie they'd built between them, Magnus couldn't let his life to amount to an unanswered question.

“Can I tell you something?” Magnus asked.

"Always," Alec said.

“Life’s too short for whatever we're doing. I don’t want to wait years, then finally buy plane tickets to try to have what I want, only to be shot in the head and stuffed into a safe. What a shitty, pointless way to go."

"Isn't that a little dramatic?"

“I think I’m horrendously in love with you,” Magnus confessed.

"Love?" Alec repeated, looking dazed. "You never said love before."

"Sure, I have," Magnus said. "You just never heard it. Alec, you’ve made me an absolute mess, a pale shadow of my former glory.”

"I--one of those seems correct."

"I think we have a choice to make about our relationship, maybe the last real one we'll ever get. And I'm not going to ask again."

"I didn't think you would ever say it," Alec said, disbelieving. "I've been waiting for you to say it, but I didn't think you felt the same way--" He grabbed Magnus' tie, fisting it in his hands. Magnus' tie clip popped off, hit the ground with a metallic clang and skittered out of sight. One of them knocked over the cups and Diet Coke fizzled and spread over the table, dribbling onto the floor. Even after they cleaned it up, the floor would be sticky for a million years. The cleaning crew was going to have an absolute _fit_ in the morning.

Magnus didn't care. It was a horrible, glorious mess.

He was too busy focused on Alec kissing him, the warm, soft pressure of his mouth.

Alec pulled back, forehead resting against his. His eyes were closed, chest heaving with shuddering breaths.

"Magnus, I'm so in love with you."

“Of course you are," Magnus said, blinking anxiously, "I’m very lovable."

“Yeah, whatever," Alec said softly, "if you really believed that, you wouldn’t have waited so long to tell me how you really felt.”

Alec had a horrible way of getting to the heart of a problem in such a plain, frank way that Magnus found terrifying. Without even trying, he'd cracked Magnus open, left him raw, completely vulnerable and scared all the way down to his argyle socks. “I can do better, I can be better," he told Alec. And it was true. How many times had he fixed himself to fit with other people, shutting away the worst, most inconvenient parts of himself?

"Why?" Alec asked, pressing a tender kiss to the tip of Magnus' nose. “I love you this way.”

 

\---

 

Magnus cuts himself off, fidgets a little. “Uh, then some things happened.”

It was a romantic moment, and he hated to disabuse Simon's sweet boyish notions, but he and Alec were two healthy red-blooded men. If they had semi-privacy and could fuck, they would probably fuck.

"Aw, man," Simon says, connecting the dots. "In the employee break area? People eat there, you know."

"Bet you won't now," Magnus says with a smug grin.

"Is there any part of the Institute you two haven't defiled?"

Simon sounds _exhausted_.

"Nope," Magnus answers happily.

 

\--

 

What he didn't tell Simon was this:

"Not that I'm complaining, but what changed?" Magnus asked, buttoning up his shirt. He made sure Alec had his shoes on this time before they left. No more embarrassing lectures from janitors.

"Someone once told me that the only way to have fear was to have something worth losing,” Alec said, leaning forward, mouth tracing Magnus’ jaw. "And I don't want to play it safe the rest of my life."

Magnus gave up trying to get dressed completely. His pants were hanging open and he shivered, remembering those same lips wrapped around his cock fifteen minutes ago.

"Good answer," Magnus said breathlessly, just as Alec grabbed his arm. "Oh, _fuck_!"

"I knew it hurt, you fucking liar!"

"It's a funny story, but some asshole shot me."

"Magnus, Magnus, I'm really sorry."

Magnus leaned over the table, hands gripping the edge and knuckles white until his arm stopped feeling like someone had set it on fire. "Ugh, it's late and I'm horribly wounded. I think it's time for me to go to bed. You should probably come with me to make sure I'm okay." He added with a leer, "I would be thrilled to give you a ride."

"Oh my god," Alec huffed, but he went home with Magnus anyway.

Magnus took Alec back to his place because he'd rather lose a left nut than have his first night with Alec within Jace's earshot. Jace, who would no doubt try to be helpful and make it sweet and memorable between them by playing obnoxious music and shouting out awful sex tips.

Magnus did spread Alec out on his silk sheets, and the gold did look as lovely against his skin as Magnus thought they would. He kissed Alec like he couldn't get enough, like he was drowning and Alec’s body was the last lungful of air as he stripped his own damp clothes off.

Just as he was eagerly yanking Alec's pants down, he stopped. "Where's your leg hair, dude?"

"My legs are just like that." Alec was laying on his back, propped up on his elbows. Any other time, that vision would have commanded 100% of Magnus' attention, but he was distracted by another yet another mystery.

"You're just so hairy everywhere else," Magnus said, absolutely bewildered.

"Can we stop talking about it," Alec complained, lifting his hips and sliding out of his underwear, kicking them off the side of the bed.

"I--yes," Magnus said, swallowing thickly.

He rolled over, grabbed lube and a condom, slanting a messy kiss across Alec's mouth along the way, then leaned down and closed his teeth around Alec's nipple, listening to the quick, sharp gasp, flicking his tongue over the puckered sensitive skin.

Magnus stretched Alec slowly, screwing one, then two slick fingers inside him, Alec’s hands fisted tightly in his hair. He took his time; he wanted to make this so fucking good for Alec that he would never, ever be satisfied by another man.

He probably shouldn't say that to Alec, though.

He dropped a quick kiss to the inside of Alec's thigh when he felt him relax around him, then crooked his fingers. Alec's eyes flew open, shocked and dark, pupils blown.

“Fuck,” Alec moaned raggedly, feet scrabbling against the soft golden sheets, trying and failing to awkwardly push back on Magnus' fingers, while Magnus pushed his fingers in and out irregularly until Alec's eyes were squeezed shut, moisture leaking from the corners.

"Ready?" Magnus asked.

"Jesus Christ, _yes_ ," Alec said desperately.

Magnus grabbed the condom and put it on, added some more lube. Alec jerked slightly when he felt the head of Magnus's cock brush against him, slowly breaching his body. "Is this okay?"

"Yeah, just -- go slow, okay?"

Magnus entered him slowly, carefully watching Alec's face, his closed eyes, tense mouth. He kept going until he was fully seated, skin again skin. He leaned forward and brushed a kiss across his lips, and Alec's eyes flew open. "Hey," he whispered.

"Hey," Alec breathed, staring up at him. It wasn't super romantic or the best dirty talk, but when had he and Alec ever gotten it picture perfect? They'd mostly stumbled together and ended up -- through a morbid case and sheer dumb luck -- to this place, where Alec was grinning up at Magnus, one impossibly long leg wrapped around Magnus' waist; Magnus above him, inside him, arms shaking with the effort of holding still, heart thudding and smiling dopily back.

Magnus pulled back and slid back in. They had both gone momentarily quiet, the only sound was Alec's panting breaths, the creaking mattress beneath them, the endless New York traffic outside the window. There were some moments that were large, important, something else entirely.

Magnus could feel Alec relaxing around him, knew the moment it became less uncomfortable, more pleasure, as Alec starting meeting his thrusts, mumbling, "Oh my god, fuck me."

Magnus sucked in a breath. "Yeah?"

"I'm not going to fucking break," Alec said as Magnus slid his hands up Alec's arms and pinned them up on either side of the pillow.

"Okay," Magnus said and pulled out, thrust back in harder, making Alec groan. Magnus started babbling then, a litany of stupid shit about how Alec was so tight, just made for him, things that made Alec blush and slowly blink his big hazel eyes up at Magnus as Magnus fucked into his body, faster, harder, Alec meeting him, using his legs for leverage, circling his hips and biting his lip.

Magnus knew he hit the right angle when Alec's mouth fell open, the quick, sharp intake of air.

Magnus released his hands to grab at Alec's cock, clumsily trying to stroke in time with his thrusts. Alec gasped into his neck, wet and hot, until he went still suddenly, clenched tight around Magnus, groaning his release into Magnus' sweat-slick neck.

He kissed Alec through the aftershocks before he began fucking him in earnest, fleshing slapping against flesh and gasping, "I've thought about this moment forever."

"That can't possibly be correct," Alec managed between panting breaths, scraping his blunt nails down Magnus' back. "That's not even science."

Magnus laughed suddenly, incredulously, feeling happiness zip up his spine, suffuse throughout his body, and blossom, warm and aching and full, in his chest.

He felt the pleasure gather and crest low in his belly, mindlessly shoving into Alec's body, tight and hot around him, as he exhaled, eyes squeezed shut and shuddered through it.

Sleepy and relaxed, he pulled out, tossed the condom in the trash and rolled back into the warm bracket of Alec's arms. He reached down, running his hands over Alec's soft skin, his fingers pleasantly tingly.

There was a small trail of moles on his chest to Alec's inner knee, and Magnus lazily kissed his way down, saying hello to each one. "I'm going to name you Maude," he crooned to the one on Alec's thigh.

"That's a sexy name," Alec said, laughing.

"Shhhh, you'll make Thurston jealous," he admonished, kissing the mark on Alec's right hip.

"I hate you," Alec said, mouth twitching and eyes bright.

"No, you don't. You love me," Magnus replied.

"Hmm," Alec teased, "someone sure has a high opinion of himself." That wasn't exactly true, but they were working on it.

"You adore me, your life would be empty and meaningless without me."

"Are there are eight times as many atoms in a teaspoonful of water as there are teaspoonfuls of water in the Atlantic ocean?" Alec asked, reaching down to touch Magnus' cheek, fingers splayed wide, and Magnus grabbed his hand to press a kiss to his palm.

Magnus had no fucking clue, didn't even much care, but now that Magnus understood Alec, now that they finally spoke the same language, he knew the answer was yes.

It was always a yes.


	8. if it's not okay, it's not the end (but it is)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's true that the city never sleeps, which is probably why New Yorkers are such assholes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title part of quote by john lennon 
> 
> ravelens, i hope you enjoyed this! <3! <3!

 

 

 

 

 

“So that’s the story,” Magnus tells Simon. He feels like he's been talking for a million years, but his history with Alec is complicated. On the surface, it looks like he just hooked up with his partner, which, to be fair, is totally true. But he and Alec are much more than that and it's important that the FBI eggheads know that. People behind desks constantly make decisions about field agents they've never met, operating under conditions they've never experienced. 

Some fights can't be won, but Magnus has compromised too much in his life and this time, he plans to go down swinging. Or at least strongly protesting.

Simon says, "But back to the breakroom--"

"Let it go, baby spook. It'll just break your heart."

"You realize I can't put any of this in my report," Simon mumbles, thumbing through his notes and looking deeply shaken. The office outside is silent, the lights gone down low.

The city outside the window glows in the darkness. It's true that the city never sleeps, which is probably why New Yorkers are such assholes.

"I don't see why not," Magnus says, peeved.

Simon coughs delicately, pale cheeks tinged with pink. "You broke so many rules, man. _So many rules_."

"Who cares about rules?"

"The FBI! The FBI does!" Simon exclaims. His leather chair squeaks as if equally agitated. 

“Ah," Magnus acknowledges a little wistfully, "them."

"Us. _Us_. _We_ are part of the FBI."

“Do you think they’ll keep letting us be partners? When do you think we'll found out?” 

He's done what he can short of threatening to hold his breath. And in the end, Magnus supposes it doesn’t matter if they get to be partners out in the field; he’s already partners with Alec in the most important way possible. But still, it would be nice. They're a great team, and he wants to be around Alec as much as possible. Magnus figures this must be Love, though admittedly, he's gotten it wrong more often than he's gotten it right. He hopes it's right this time. There's no way to know for sure, except see it through, keep trying to navigate the constantly shifting landscape of his life as best as he can.

Just keep going.

Simon says, “I'm not going to lie, this is super irregular, but you guys are a pretty unusual case. If anyone can make it work, you two can." He shuts his notebook. Case over. "If it means anything, I'm rooting for the both of you.”

“You know what? You’re okay,” Magnus tells Simon. 

“I know that,” Simon says. “You think I don't know that? You’re the one that’s been a dick to me all day. I told you that I'm on your side.”

“Yeah,” Magnus says, rubbing the back of his neck and standing. “I’m really sorry about that. I just--it felt like you were trying to take my partner away from me. But I get that you were just doing your job.”

“So, we’re cool?" Simon asks hesitantly. 

“We’re cool,” Magnus says, holding out his hand. Simon shakes it, looking grateful. 

Magnus gathers his coat and stretches before crossing the room, hand poised on the doorknob. 

“Hey," Simon says, "maybe after this, you might want to go out and get a drink? I think you’re super awesome--”

“No,” Magnus interrupts loudly, door banging closed behind him.

He gets halfway down to the lobby before he curses and turns back, angrily jabbing his thumb at the elevator button. 

When he gets back to Simon's office, Simon is sitting alone at his computer, typing, alone. He's new to the job and city. He seems lonely.

"The whole gang's meeting at the diner a couple blocks over. Want to come?"

"You serious?" Simon asks, eyes wide. He looks like a happy baby deer and Magnus presses his lips together. 

"I guess," Magnus sighs. 

Simon sends his email and shuts down his computer, practically trips in his eagerness to grab his backpack and coat. Oh Christ, he still uses a backpack. 

"Just finished sending my report in," Simon says shyly.

"I guess things'll go how they go," Magnus says. "Come on, let's get out of this dump." The FBI offices after hours give him the creeps. Rumor is that it's haunted, and J. Edgar himself listens in on your phone calls and spies on you in the bathroom.

Izzy, Jace, Clary, and Alec are waiting for them at the diner Magnus frequents, probably already half-way to drunk because there isn't a responsible adult among them. Magnus will order some nasty chili-cheese fries while Alec insists he's not hungry, then bemusedly watch as Alec steals half of them in-between explaining thermodynamic equilibrium to a group split evenly between people that already know all about it and people that don't give a flying fuck.

All said, it's been a good day. Magnus is done worrying about things he can't change. It's time to focus on what he has. And it's a hell of a lot.

Outside, the rain has stopped, the streets and sidewalk glistening and damp. 

Simon talks more than anyone else Magnus has ever met, a constant low drone about how exciting this city is and that Magnus dresses so cool, _so cool_ , and where did he get his jacket, by the way?

In the distance, Magnus can see the gleam from the ugly diner slicing through the gloom. A window stretches across the front, a row of tables pushed up against it. Front and center, he can see Jace kissing Clary's head, her red hair pulled back, a smudge of charcoal on her cheek; Izzy leaning over to say something to Alec and Alec laughing; Catarina back in town and she's brought Ragnor along, who looks like he'd rather be anywhere else. 

It's really something.

It's family, Magnus thinks and slings his arm around Simon's shoulder -- "Come on, baby spook. I'll buy you a Shirley Temple" -- as they make their way towards the warm light of the diner, towards his friends, his family.

 

\---

 

A few weeks later, the FBI decides to let them work together under close supervision and regular check-ins with Simon.

"You're stuck with me forever," Magnus crows. 

"Lucky me," Alec says. They're in Alec's lab where Alec has been hard at work on his magic glowing plants. He's decided not to give up on them. In his constant uniform of goggles and plain lab coat, he looks a little like a crazed Bond villain, which probably shouldn't turn Magnus on as much as it does. If Alec ever gets a pet shark, Magnus is going to need some alone time.

Later that day, they decide to celebrate by having a quickie in the storage room when they're interrupted by Clary and Jace. "My eyes! My innocent eyes!" Jace yells, clamping a hand to his face. 

Magnus and Alec go home together, they make out like high schoolers, and he cooks for Alec. Magnus makes his pilfered meatloaf recipe and Alec eats a truly frightening amount. Cooking for two is infinitely more pleasurable than cooking for one, Magnus finds. 

About four weeks later, Jace leaves for Quantico and though Magnus is glad to see the little turd go, he misses him just a tiny bit. Not that he would ever tell Jace or Alec or Izzy. Jace would never let him live it down and Alec and Izzy are incapable of keeping secrets because apparently, all scientists are horrible gossips.

Though Magnus hopes Izzy can keep a secret when it matters because she helped him pick out the ring that currently resides in the back of his sock drawer. It's too early yet, but soon. He trusts himself to know when the time's right.

 

\---

 

Time passes, as it does, weeks blurring into happy months.

In the middle of summer, at some un-fucking-godly hour, Magnus answers his phone. After getting the details, he hangs up, rolls over in bed and kisses Alec on the shoulder.

"Wake up, Bones."

"I still hate that nickname," Alec grouses, face-first in his pillow. He props himself up and frowns down at his pillow like it's personally disappointed him.

"Hm, well, management will take that under advisement. Feel free to take it up with our complaint department," Magnus says, gesturing at the trashbin nestled between mountains of moving boxes filled with textbooks, microscopes, other expensive doodads with a terrifying amount of little parts. Plus, Alec's massive and massively nerdy collection of D+D cards, which was almost more than Magnus could handle as he staggered up the stairs to his apartment, laughing so hard he was afraid he'd fall down and accidentally kill himself over magic wizard cards.

"God, you're so funny in the morning," Alec complains.

“Body in the river. Floater.”

"That's less funny. Do we have to go?” Alec asks with a groan, sitting up and rubbing his eyes like a little kid. He's the only person Magnus has ever seen do that in real life and it makes Magnus feel hopelessly tender. 

“C’mon, gorgeous." Magnus rakes his fingers through Alec's untidy hair. "That river sediment isn’t going to scrape itself off the dead body.”

“You say the most romantic things,” Alec grumbles. “I’m up. _Fuck_ , I’m up. It was a long night.”

"You've no one but yourself to blame, staying up all night to gossip with Jace like a little old lady." Magnus goes to his closet and pulls on his suit -- dark green with a darker, pinstriped tie. 

"He's excited about coming back to New York." Alec makes a face at Magnus' suit but ends up stealing one of Magnus' ties -- a blue one with tiny red flowers dotting it. He ties it, and Magnus fixes it for him. Alec always wears them too long. 

He's having Jace transferred to his unit because Jace is, unfortunately, rather good at his job, got top marks at Quantico, but that doesn't mean he's not going to haze the shit out of him. 

Just as Magnus is getting ready to put on his cufflinks, he looks hard at them, feeling the weight of them in his palm. He never did find his tie clip, didn't spend all that long looking for it, either.

He glances back at Alec running his hands through his hair a few times, then giving up. Alec's soft sigh as he checks his forensic kit. Magnus scoops the cufflinks into the trash without a second thought. 

They’ll catch the murder, of that Magnus has no doubt. Order takeout while they work through the night. Magnus will wait until everyone has gone home and sneak into Alec’s lab, where they’ll fuck slowly, surrounded by Petri dishes of the mold spores Alec’s studying and the soft whirr of the centrifuge, Magnus’ hand over Alec’s mouth as he rides him slowly, listening for the click of the new security guard’s shoes as he does his rounds. Afterward, they’ll clean up and Alec will explain the differences between sediment, which Magnus will only sort of listen to, instead, mostly admiring the small visible patch of hair on Alec’s chest, his lovely neck, slick with sweat.

"Simon will probably swing by the Institute later to offer us his analysis of the victim and murderer."

“I think that little twerp is making some kind of move on her.”

“Isabelle? She can take care of herself. Besides, she eats kids like him for breakfast.”

“You think I don’t know that? Also, I could break him like a twig,” Alec says darkly. 

“I’m strangely turned on right now," Magnus says, "but no time. Bodies to see, murderers to catch." Magnus privately thinks there might be something there. Simon makes Izzy laugh, but he's not going to say anything to Alec just yet. They can have their nerd slap-fest later.

Magnus gives himself one backward look in the mirror and winks at his own reflection before heading out, Alec following closely behind.

 

\---

 

"We could wait here around here for the rest of the day for the techs and Park Service to get set up _or_ we could hike down _o_ r we could just jump. Obviously, you know which I would prefer."

"Oh my god," Alec complains, staring down over the side of the cliff, "I always knew you'd be the death of me. That or the God particle. Fuck my life."

"Aren't the odds like, one in a billion?"

"How did you know that?" Alec asks. He's already loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top of his shirt. He's given up on "trying to be fancy" completely and his boots crunch against the gravel. 

"I know science-y things," Magnus mutters. 

"That's at least a twenty-foot drop, we'd hit the water at about 25mph."

“Did you calculate that right now, my exquisite flower?”

“Do what now?” Alec shoots him an extremely unimpressed look.

“Alexander,” Magnus corrects himself. 

"We could get dislocated joints, broken bones, compressed spine, injured discs, paralysis and death--" Alec frets.

"Are any of those things likely?"

"No," Alec answers sullenly. "The water is at least fifty feet deep. That's okay for a jump this high."

"Where's your sense of adventure?"

"I must have left it in my other spine."

"You can stay here," Magnus says seriously. "You don't have to go or we both can hike down."

"It'll take longer and evidence degrades faster in the water."

“You trying to convince me or yourself?” Magnus says, staring down. Alec might worry himself to death over what-ifs, but he secretly wants to go. He loves the adventure, too. Magnus turns to Alec one last time. “You don’t have to come with me. This part is my job. I can do it alone.”

"No way," Alec insists, "You're stuck with me." It's the same thing Magnus once said to Alec. "We’re partners for life, wingtips. 

Alec regularly cycles through horrible FBI names for him, settling on "son of bitch" when he's angry and "my love" when he's not. Magnus dislikes most of them, is kind of sorry he started the trend, but mostly, he's just happy to have a nickname again.

His phone rings and Magnus answers. "Bane."

It's Ragnor, asking for an update. 

"Permission to jump off a cliff, sir."

Over the line, Ragnor's voice is incandescent with rage and despair. "Don't you _dare_ \--"

"Sorry, sir, the signal's breaking up," Magnus says as he ends the call and carefully puts it in one of Alec's plastic evidence baggies before tucking it back into his suit pocket. It was one of Alec's better ideas, though he did suggest Magnus could just stop taking so many goddamn risks. 

But Magnus loves the excitement, the thrill of his job. He'd long ago accepted it about himself, thought of it as just another thing for someone to endure, but Alec leans in when others stood back, laughs at his embarrassing jokes, tells him that suit color combination isn't nearly as fetching as he seems to think it is. They disagree a lot and on further consideration, Magnus revoked Alec's gun certification, to Alec's deep and eternal annoyance. He can have a gun when he stops accidentally shooting people.

But Alec makes him feel not okay with his life, exactly -- he'll always be a little restless, a little hungry, a little too _everything_ \-- but okay with the fact that he's the way that he is. Like maybe there was nothing wrong with him in the first place.

"You're sure about coming with me?" Magnus asks again for reassurance. The water swirls beneath him, dark and ominous. What lies beneath the surface? There's no way to know, but he's pretty jazzed to find out. 

There is only to jump, to take a proverbial and literal leap of faith. 

You could, Magnus supposes, completely miss the mark and end up busting your ass in a particularly humiliating fashion or -- 

The sun’s coming up, bright orange and pink, pushing back the night. It blooms over Alec’s face in increments as Alec gazes steadily back at him. 

 -- you may just find yourself someplace unexpectedly beautiful. 

"I'm sure," Alec says firmly. He rolls his sleeves up, ready to get to work, and loops the strap from his evidence bag around his shoulders. He looks so handsome. Like a big geeky action figure, Superman with a traveling spectrophotometer. "Always."

So, take that risk. It might be worth it. After all, you'll never know unless you try.

Magnus gives his suit pocket a little pat where he put the ring this morning and takes Alec's hand, holding on as tight as he can as Alec nervously squeezes back. He counts to three out loud and together, they leap.

 

 

 

 


End file.
